Return to the Swamp
by Arual-san
Summary: Sequel to From Solo to Trio. Fresh from rescuing Zuko's mother, he, Katara and Toph head back to the Western Air Temple but are sidetracked along the way. No Zutara. Let's tie up loose strings of the series!
1. Chapter 1

Here's the sequel you all requested. Enjoy!

- Arual-san

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A sea of clouds lay above and a sea of trees below, spanning on for miles with barely a spot of blue sky or brown dirt to be spotted in between. All that could be seen to break up the two fields of color was a spot of red like a fleck of paint accidentally flicked from the smock of the artist that had painted it. On further inspection it could be seen bearing the emblem of the Fire Nation, those within however were hardly loyal parties to the mighty empire. Even after they had mercifully washed their hands of playing the awkward role of both abductor and nursemaid to their most dangerous enemy and had dropped off the Kyoshi Island native Khan in the nearest village so he could hitch a ride home, space in the balloon basket was still a tight fit with even one more passenger to carry than what they'd had at takeoff. One could barely shift a sleeping position without banging an elbow or two.

"You're not taking up space, Mom," Zuko assured at the third time he'd managed to tread over Toph's fingers. "It's uh…this bulky stove." He banged a hand against the stove he was manning to emphasize the fact.

"Thanks, sweetie," said the former Fire Lady, offering up a smile at his less than smooth comment. "It's nice to hear I've managed to keep my girlish figure after all these years."

"Yeah, _sweetie_," Katara echoed with slit eyes and an excessively wry grin stolen from her brother. She'd snuck up on Zuko with that expression and was at his shoulder wearing it before he could trace.

Zuko's mouth stretched low and he drew away with some apprehension. Shaking his head as if it could banish away that mocking face of hers, he got back to his mother. "Ugh, I'm seventeen! Don't call me that!"

"Oh, that's right; your birthday was last month, wasn't it? Is Cherries Jubilee still your favorite dessert?"

"_Mom_," Zuko pressed in a low, warning tone.

"I do hope they got the liqueur amounts right," she carried on, oblivious. "That one time the servant girl positively marinated the poor cake in spirits. It wasn't much but it was so potent on yours and Azula's little bodies that you kept crashing into the other, giggling and drunk all throughout the apple bobbing."

At the very thought Katara and Toph's faces puffed out red and to enormous widths to keep from exploding.

"_Mom!_" It did Zuko no good being reminded of the stupidest time he had almost drowned.

"Still the fussy thing you always were, I see," Ursa sighed. She pulled her knees to her chest in effort to stretch and even clothed in the raggedy garb of a peasant and the less than ladylike position she still held herself like a lady. "What _shall_ I call you then?"

"_Zuzu!_" And like a spring-loaded trap Toph sprung up from the basket's bottom straight into their circle. "He _loves_ that!"

"He _hates_ that!" Zuko corrected, growling.

"Bah, like that _means_ anything," the girl waved off with little care. "What _you_ hate could fill up several scrolls."

"Want to guess where _you_ rank on that list?"

She shrugged. "Somewhere between big, sloppy bison kisses and getting the flat of Sokka's sword – him several ranks your lesser – on your backside at your last sparring session?"

"You're getting a higher rank every word you speak."

"Ooo-wee, I'm so scared." And she put up a false show of fright. "You know, you're lucky you never had to face _me_ in all those Avatar hunts of yours. Just had to deal with Sugar 'n Sunshine and our effeminate little savior of the world."

"What about Sokka?" Katara felt she had to mention.

"Who?"

"Our _Idea_ Guy? You remember how incomplete everything felt when he was off training."

Despite how it didn't surface to her face, Toph recalled the time when the group had all been lounging around as boneless as any sea slug and with little more energy than one, having to suffer through Katara's painfully bad attempts to fill the comic void of her brother. Sokka had brought the life back into them just by showing up, brought back the cheer and even a blush to the young girl's cheeks without even trying.

It wasn't that Toph didn't have her feminine side, for she did, she just didn't feel at the moment in indulging in it.

"You're right, Katara."

Toph's words caught Katara off guard.

"I've been neglecting appreciation of the crucial members of our group for far too long." Toph reached for Momo, whom she'd recently been sharing body heat with while sleeping in the cold air. "Thank you Momo for always finding us the best berry bushes…even though you try to hoard them all for yourself, for all the times you-"

"Never mind," said Katara, brushing it off as Toph continued on and on thanking Momo for tiny, trivial things.

"To answer your question," Zuko started up again to his mother since the conversation had veered off track, "my _name_ will do just fine, thank you."

"Oh I was just teasing, Zuko," Katara came back when she saw that the big stiff was not for the first time taking things too seriously. "Let your mom call you what she pleases, I don't mind. I think it's sweet."

That of course made him want to protest endearment names even more. He still had to hold up the pride ingrained into him of a Fire Nation prince…even if his title was at present time null and void. If it was allowed to fly with the girls Zuko didn't even want to imagine how hard of a time the _guys_ would give him once they reached the temple: their former enemy for so long seen as the embodiment of his native element all fiery anger and destruction…now with a loving mother to coax from him his _feelings_.

They would _never_ let him live it down, especially not Sokka.

Somehow Ursa seemed to pick up in her son's silence that he was at that stage in his adolescence where one craved independence. Though he would still always be hers, Zuko wasn't her little boy anymore. He was fast becoming a man.

"Very well, Zuko," she said and it wasn't a huge sacrifice she had to make. She was still just thankful to be in good regards with at least one of her children, not brainwashed into a bloodthirsty combatant by her ex-husband.

"Not to worry there, ol' boy," said Toph, giving him a slug in the arm. "We tease because we love."

Growling over it to himself, Zuko subtly rubbed at the arm, trying not to show how hard the little earthbender could hit.

"Since we're all awake may as well pass out rations." Katara passed out not the usual bowls of rice but an assortment of fruit they'd picked up in the forest from their last stop and for once she gave an equal portion of it to Zuko whom, since his arrival at the Western Air Temple, had always been received by her with the last and least bottom-of-the-pot scrapings of burnt rice.

He made sure to nod to her in appreciation.

She received it and returned her own small nod, gestures which no one else noticed.

"So _this_-" – Katara pointed to a point at the map spread between them – "Is where we are right now. We're going to be going over a minor river in about a half a mile and then adjust the balloon southeast for the Western Air Temple."

"The Avatar," Ursa said quietly, looking down upon the map, "Such an honor. I apologize, but I may just be an extra commodity in any upcoming battles."

"You're not required to fight, Ursa," said Katara. "But I'm sure you can provide us inside information about the inner workings of the palace."

"You could've asked _me_ that," Zuko pointed out with some annoyance, oblivious as males could sometimes be that Katara had been trying to ease his mother's burden.

"_Yes_," answered Katara, "but I'm sure with her higher position she may've been privy to certain things that _you_ weren't."

Zuko's reply was a simple grunt.

"I feel that I must thank you kind girls again for rescuing me," And, despite that she was born into royalty, Ursa bowed her head to the two. "You didn't know me and yet you risked your lives for me. I am in your debt."

"No," Katara disagreed and in that she was firm. "You owe me nothing."

"Same here," Toph agreed. "Glad to help."

"You have saved my life. Bound to my honor, I am indebted to you until I can return to you a favor of equal value."

"That's really not-"

"It is the way of our nation."

"Hey, hold it a second," Toph slashed her hand through the air, directing attention her way. "Is this why Princess over here has been grinning and bearing all the overtime hours of payback I've been taking out on him for burning my feet? I'd have stopped a long time ago but he never said anything!"

Shock alighted Ursa's fair features. "You burned her feet?"

"Kinda," he gulped. "It was an accident."

"Oh no," Katara breathed out when it dawned on her. "You're not…for _every_…" For every wrong Zuko had done their group, for the kindness they'd nevertheless paid him in return he could very well be making it up for years. "Don't you go keeping tabs on everything," she said to him, making the older boy feel smaller than her. "I hereby revoke any and all debts, you hear me? Leave it in the past."

"I…" Zuko started, unsure.

"If you're so set on turning against your own nation for the good of this world you'll respect the ways of _my_ tribe along with your own. We do not hold onto such things forever and ever. You may have been our enemy once but-"

"But you're our comrade now," Toph finished for Katara, though the words she spoke might not have been dead-on with Katara's.

From his seat Zuko sat motionless. He blinked very slowly. He blinked again. "I……thank you."

Again, using her powers of observation rather than speaking, a skill she'd developed finely as a noblewoman, Ursa decided not to pry into things she ought not to pry. She changed the subject quite suddenly, not a difficult task in the others' silence, by pointing to a second location on the map. "This is the village of my former residence. I hate to press this upon you but there is some number of possessions I would like to pick up. It's not far and a select few are quite valuable to me, I daresay. Would you mind?"

"Only five miles? No, not at all."

The balloon reached the village in the early stages of night. It was a modest little place small enough to likely not even be marked on most maps and most of its inhabitants had gone home for the night. Only a gang of panther-cats prowled the streets and, out of recollection of the breed, Momo remained behind in the balloon while the four headed into the deserted alleyways. Their destination was the teashop/inn where Ursa had worked and when they entered it they found the owner staring face on with them, a bo in hand.

Each of the kids froze in place in plenty awkward positions.

"He sleeps with his eyes open," Ursa assured them all and she clapped her hands before the old man's face to prove it. Her fingers walked along the wall behind him and closed over a key. "My room is number four. Retrieve what you can."

Awkwardness turned to confusion.

"You're not coming with?"

"I have another destination in mind."

With a mighty snort, the old man jolted in his sleep, mumbling about old glory days in the war, thereby silencing anything the three of them had been meaning to say. Ursa shooed them to the stairs and they didn't question her orders.

The stairs pushed Katara to the limit with every step creaking with the force of thunderbolt in the dead quiet of the inn. She didn't want to have to use her bending against a frail old man when she could seriously injure him with even a movement of subdual. Though it seemed nothing short of a quaking fissure rupturing through the ground would wake the old man, Toph still pointed out for the others the weak points in the floor below to prevent any further noise.

Door number four opened soundlessly enough and the three started packing up whatever possessions of Ursa's had not yet been pawned.

Navigating still through the ground floor of the inn, Ursa knew that her end of the mission was the riskier of the two she'd had to make for the innkeeper's wife was not the same deep sleeper as he. She closed a hand over the handle and turned it round with great caution.

There the old woman lay in a rickety old rocking chair, swaying back and forth with the weight of her fleshy body.

With the same great care taken it opening it, Ursa pushed back the door, holding her breath at the thin wail it made. She took the bedroom in as a whole with its pile of ashes in the hearth, homemade quilt over the small bed and the washing basin and mirror. She scanned it all and found what she was looking for at once.

She made her first step inside.

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Already had Katara and Toph hopped back into the basket of the balloon while Zuko loaded up the things they had managed to save. Three wrapped up bundles of cloth lay at his feet and, as some of them were quite heavy, he loaded them in one at a time to the girls. Almost on cue, Ursa arrived just as Zuko had been turning to go back for her. "Is that the last of it?" he asked, looking to where she held yet other bundle in her arms. He clapped his hands. "Toss it over and we'll get going."

Looking up from the thing she held, Ursa fixed him with a very odd look that he could not place.

"Uhh…" Zuko stuttered, unsure of what he was supposed to say or do, what she was expecting of him, "that's fine though if you want to err…pull your own weight or what have you." He stepped aside. "After you."

She stepped past him and into the balloon.

It wasn't until they had cleared the village that she turned back to and knelt beside him.

"Mom?"

From the bundle that lay on her lap Ursa pulled back a flap from its top to reveal the tiny face of a sleeping toddler.

"Say hello to your second little sister."


	2. Chapter 2

Thank you everyone for the wonderful reviews! I really appreciate it!

Arual-san

To say that Zuko was surprised was an understatement. He couldn't have been more shell-shocked had a bomb dropped and unearthed a ten foot deep crater a step before where he stood. For their part, the girls shared in that same shock but to a lesser degree and only for a span of a few seconds before clamoring over to see the new little addition to their party.

"Aww, she's so cute!"

"And squishy!" Toph added, poking the baby and smiling.

The baby's eyes flashed open at the prod and she blinked chocolate-brown irises at all the new faces focused only on her. She was quickly outgrowing infancy and seemed to be around a year old. Brown hair, only a few shades shy of black, was pulled up into pigtails atop a heart-shaped face and a mole grew at the corner of her left eye like a pint-sized raindrop.

Quite the socialite, the little girl squealed an intelligible hello and wiggled an arm all around.

"S-sister?" choked Zuko, mind still not processing the fact past stage one.

Katara returned a squeal of her own and reached her arms out at once to receive the baby, something Ursa couldn't allow quickly enough for the teenager. From there Katara unloaded all her love and cuddling onto the little body while Toph played piggie with her tiny toes.

"I have a…?" Zuko tried again, struggling to get the words out. "She's…?"

"Her name is Keiko," Ursa informed, despite that little of anyone's attention was now for her. "Funny story, I was caught out in one of the alleyways of a bad village late at night and crossed paths with a mugger. Who knew the man who saved me would be the one I would remarry?"

"She's my…?"

"Who's that then?" Toph asked Ursa distractedly, while she and the others completely overlooked Zuko's dilemma.

"Her father is an Earth Kingdom soldier and a brave man working as a double agent somewhere in the Fire Nation. He had to leave me while I was about six months along so Zuko here is the first bit of family for her to meet. Speaking of which," she said, taking Keiko back and holding her out to her first-born, "Go on then, say hello, you two."

To the toddler stretched out before him, gurgling and flailing her little limbs in the air, Zuko's catatonic expression, if possible, became more severe as he looked on her like she was a giant sea slug excreting mucus from every orifice.

"Zuko, my arms are going to fall asleep," Ursa prodded gently after a few moments before the situation became awkward. "Take your sister."

"S-sister…"

"Yes, we've established that."

"_Another_…you're sure she's my…?"

"Quite sure." She couldn't keep some irony out of her voice. "I remember rather vividly the six hours of labor I had to go through."

"Uhh…"

"I'll take my turn please if he doesn't want it," Toph popped in from the side, excited to have a distraction from her hated form of flying. "Toss the little booger over here."

"I'll take a second turn! Come to Katara, Keiko!"

In all the commotion Momo roused from the stack of bundles that held all kinds of new smells and things to explore and when he did a little flower pot had found its way onto his head, shadowing his great green eyes. He shook it off and got in between the girls.

"Go away, Momo!"

"We fed you already!"

Grumbling in his lemur voice, Momo skulked away, recognizing that he was being snubbed. He'd been the closet thing to both a pet and a baby in the group but now the girls had the real thing to coo over. He got the attention he'd sought but not the frequency when on the way back to the bundles he stepped in something moist and damp.

"Hey! Get out of my mud!"

"And why now do you have a bowl of mud a hundred feet in the air, Toph?"

Not needing words to answer such a question, the young earthbender plunked a foot straight into the bowl, heaving a joyful sigh over the contact that any other girl would've rather uttered in a lavish spa treatment. "Plenty to share, Katara," offered Toph, sticking her mud-coated foot all too near the other girl's face, wiggling the brown muck between her digits with relish, "Your element and mine."

"Umm…that's okay." And by her tone Katara clearly would've preferred the baby.

At the other end of the basket, Zuko relieved his mother of her load but held Keiko with stick-straight arms that offered no leeway and a severe expression that seemed chiseled from stone.

"This is Zuko, dear," said Ursa to her daughter. "He's your big brother."

With all the curiosity of someone new to the world, Keiko stared, hardly blinking in between. "Za…zzzz…" she tested on her tongue, unfamiliar with the less used letter of the alphabet, sounding more like a scorpion-bee than anything else. "Zzzz…"

"Uhh…hey," Zuko offered lamely to the toddler he held before him, at a loss for words.

"Keiko," his mother reminded at his ear.

"You named her after the duck? The _duck_?"

"I suppose I did, yes. Happy memories, cheery baby, you know, the name just seemed to fit. And no, I didn't name _you_ after a turtle-duck or one of my pet peacock-cats either, Zuko. No need to ask."

Such reassurance passed by unnoticed to the boy, who'd only even uttered the duck statement out of some vague thought in the corner of his mind. Evidence that his mother had lived a whole life without him, started a new family for the one she had lost, was all in the small weight in his arms. Except for the eyes, before black hair had grown in to replace the brown, Keiko looked strikingly similar to baby portraits of…

Zuko banished that thought from his mind before he could finish thinking it. Not a second after, Keiko started wailing and struggling to be free from his grip and at first Zuko had the ridiculous thought that she had somehow sneaked a glimpse into his mind.

The others clarified things.

"Haven't you _ever_ held a baby before?"

"Don't hold her so far away! You're not going to catch a disease!"

"And don't clutch her like that – hands like claws – her skin is delicate!"

"Loosen up! Come on, Zuko!"

All of their voices swirled around in his head, nagging and scolding, the loudest noise of all of Keiko's cries, that he felt some sense of vertigo and so shoved the baby off into the arms of the nearest person he could reach, glad to be free of her.

Toph was all too happy to take her turn with the baby, bouncing her on a knee to get her to calm down, but when that seemed to do little Toph passed Keiko back to her mother for a scent and touch to which the baby was accustomed. The girls knew to keep their distance when a baby had gotten into a foul mood but Zuko, determined to right his wrong, fished out a bottle from the bundles, lit a flame beneath to bubble the milk.

Keiko's cries had tapered off into whimpers by the time the milk had heated and so Zuko thought it safe to approach with his offering of peace.

"Good baby, got some nice milk for-"

But when Zuko had gotten within only an arm's length Keiko took time out from her crying. Her head snapped up and she glared nowhere else but for the source of her despair.

"_Bad!_" she yelled, pointing an accusing little finger at him.

_Foom!_

The flame Zuko had been nursing, hardly larger than a thumb, swelled enough to devour the bottle whole. His eyes widened at the sight but with quick reflexes he siphoned the fire into his other hand before it could bake his flesh or shatter the glass on the spot.

Nestled safe at her mother's breast, Keiko grunted grumpily, lapping up that attention as if to make her brother jealous instead.

"Keiko! Don't attack your brother!" Stranger words spoken to a toddler could not have been found in the nations of the three tamer elements. The most violent and naturally destructive of them all, fire was a different story.

"So she's a firebender, is she?"

"Most of the family is blessed as such." She set Keiko down.

"Are we going to be _safe_ up here? She's not going to start the balloon on fire, is she?"

"She's usually an obedient girl, however I would advise not to get her mad."

"Easy to spoil a firebender kid, huh?" Toph figured, keeping her distance like the others until Keiko ran out of steam. "When one bad tantrum could set your whole house on fire I'll bet they're going to be the ones running the show."

"I could say likewise that an earthbender child could get that same house swallowed up by an enormous sinkhole," Ursa countered back to that, a bit of a bite in her voice in defending her nation, "But you already know that though, I'm sure."

Done exploring all that she could of the little space, Keiko plopped down in front of Toph and Toph was only aware of her intentions when the baby plunked her chubby fists into the bowl of mud, joining in with her for a lack of unpacked toys. Eager for someone to play with, Toph pulled back her foot and used her hands as Keiko did but to make her own mud-people puppet show.

A shapeless blob bubbled up from the mud. Eye sockets sunk into its head and a cavern parted for a mouth.

"Rowr!" Toph growled, giving the tiny beast a mighty voice.

Keiko clapped her hands and squealed, quite forgetting what she had been so angry about. She looked on with glowing attention when the mud-beast snuck up on unsuspecting mud-animals, turning back into a lump when they turned around, before devouring them and acquiring a feature of the defeated animal – antlers, fins, etc. It wasn't long until the beast looked quite funny instead of fearsome.

"Boom! Boom!" boomed Toph, giving it sound effects as it terrorized the mud-world, making Keiko fall over herself in laughter.

Katara gave a wide smile at the display while Zuko's reaction was half-hearted.

"There's something else you need to know," Ursa began but before she could even finish that very issue was brought to life by Toph's startled gasp. Everyone turned to look and though they saw the earthbender a foot away from her earth the show continued.

The mud-beast had turned into an erect sort of lizard and it mimicked Keiko's stomp, stomp, stomping on the basket.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

"Toph, that's not funny!"

"It's not me!" Toph insisted. "The kid's doing it!"

"But that's impossible, she's already a firebender and- and-" Katara started, finding it difficult to finish that sentence when the proof rumbled the very ground she stood on. "Only the Avatar is supposed to be able to bend more than one element!"

"I'm not entirely familiar with the way these things are passed on when two nations mix," started Ursa, trying to shed some light. "Even when our world was at peace it was quite an uncommon thing and quite difficult to find information about in the libraries Shinji and I would drop in on when I was expecting. I did manage to find a small bit of information though."

"Yeah?"

"One element will ultimately drown out the other's influence within approximately a year's time, much like the way one becomes right or left hand dominant. This is only a temporary condition. Soon either Earth or Fire will claim her as its own."

"This is an interesting situation," said Katara aloud but she was more voicing aloud her thoughts than addressing anyone in particular.

"She's totally got the drive of an earthbender!" Toph decided at once, squatting down beside the girl with a mischievous smile that filled her whole face. "Haven't had an apprentice since Twinkletoes. You ready for boot camp, Keiko?"

"Boom-boom!"

"Is that a yes?"

"The way she's saying it," said Ursa, observing as Keiko continued on, "I think she thinks it's your name."

"_I_ have a nickname? After all the nicknames _I_ was so generous to distribute? Sweet." Toph pushed the mud-beast back into a flat mass and stood before the toddler with arms set wide on her hips. "Training begins now, Zuko. Mark my words; she _will_ come over to _my_ side."

Even to a challenge that would possibly be the most important decision in his young sister's life, Zuko seemed lacking the energy to take Toph up on it and he looked instead over the woodland below, which had just bypassed into swamp. In training Keiko he might be willingly giving the girl who so resembled Azula her first set of claws that she might one day think nothing of using on any one of them.


	3. Chapter 3

Turning his attention away from all the others, as though it might've given him the peace he needed to sort things out, Zuko spared a wide glance to the swampland below. The wind blew weakly that day and so he could almost hear the sounds of the most vocal of inhabitants below but among the wide-mouthed screaming bird and the croak of the mammoth frogs he seemed to feel something more. He didn't react in whipping back to the sudden clang of the stove door as Keiko tried its red-hot surface without suffering a burn.

Something seemed to be pulling him in.

"Zuko?" Katara brought him back in that she was specifically calling to him.

"Wha-? Yeah?"

"You're dropping the altitude of the balloon. Any reason? I think we're all good for supplies and bathroom breaks."

Trailing his attention back from the swamp and to the tips of his hand he found that he had unconsciously adjusted the lever of the balloon, letting some of its hot air loose. Already they had banked several feet and yet Zuko couldn't recall moving his hand as such. He had been much too focused on the swamp and, in truth, still was. The eerie interest that had captured Zuko's attention and his awareness to the point of him acting zombie-like to any questions directed to him passed over Katara and Toph but not Ursa, who rose to her feet to stare with the same wide gaze as her son. Even Keiko seemed interested, taking time out from the Toph's enthusiastic display of mud-puppets she loved so to the edge of the basket where her mother and brother looked…even if she had to jump at its reed wall and try to reach the rim just to see.

"This swamp…" said Ursa when neither of her children would voice it aloud, "something is down there."

Whether it was the deepness and mystery of her tone as she said so, that the three almost seemed to be under some mild trance as though nothing important or of value existed beyond the few miles of swamp, Katara and Toph couldn't just brush it off as they would when dealing with their usual fellow flyers that were Sokka and Aang. As far as they knew Zuko didn't possess a sense of humor, therefore him snapping out of his strange state and yelling 'Got you!' was a possibility that crashed and burned before it had even left the ground.

"Bugs and beasties and algae," Toph said, slightly unsteadily in reply to Ursa's claim, trying in vain to put some levity into the situation. "Nothing we can't find in any other old swamp."

Since she seemed the most focused on the rest of the world that wasn't the swamp, Ursa was Katara's first choice to interrogate into the matter and to strengthen the connection the teen placed a hand to the older woman's shoulder. This was situation all too familiar.

"Is there any particular reason that this place holds so much interest?"

"I…" Ursa may have been off in her own little world dreaming about meadows and koala-sheep for all the languor of her voice. She however responded, stringing words together through the haze, "we cannot…pass this by…something to be found…a voice that needs to speak…"

"I _dare_ you to be vaguer," And in the breath of that sentence Toph was right there before the Fire Lady snapping her fingers, clapping her hands, anything to get from her a clear answer.

"I'm the only one here from the original umm…_Aang Gang_," Katara shuddered in having to speak those dreadful words of Sokka's to prevent any confusion from newer members of the rebel forces, "so I can tell you we ran into this situation before. It actually directed us to selecting Toph as Aang's earthbending teacher."

"Yeah, yeah, I remember meeting the little weirdo, wanting to _talk_ in the middle of professional earthbending smackdown." Toph made a 'phffing' noise between her teeth. "Had a vision in a _magic_ swamp about me, _that's_ not creepy at _all_. If _this_ swamp is offering up the same crackpot juju I say we keep right on flying."

"Aren't you overlooking the obvious that this vision is why we hand-picked you out of a whole kingdom of earthbenders?"

"I think Bumi's information was the original source there, finding someone who waits and listens, something I'd put more stock in all that spiritual mumbo-jumbo. Hear that Keiko? _I_ was recruited by the Avatar, a much better sifu than-"

"Getting off the subject here."

"If I'm getting off the subject than _you're_ the one taking her eyes off the prize. Sorry to say this Fire Family but we don't exactly have an endless amount of time to waste gallivanting off into some swamp. We're on a deadline for when that comet comes, time that's already been compromised by this trip and the detour to pick up the little squirt here. _Not_ happening, Zuko. Level us out."

Though Ursa and Zuko took the information in with some sort of mumbling or another it was obvious where their vote was set against Toph. Deliberating over either end, Katara reluctantly sided with Toph and to break the tie (since neither a baby nor a lemur were valid candidates) she declared that with her seniority that her vote counted for an extra point, taking advantage that the opposing side was too out of it to argue.

Nudging Zuko aside and having his weight shift away like he was a life-size doll, Katara took over the balloon's controls. The lever was returned to neutral and their flight level evened out from its gradual descent.

"Is that a…?" Zuko trailed off vaguely, squinting his eyes to make out the source: a winding stream of smoke circling up from the trees.

Fire couldn't naturally spawn in such a damp environment; oppositely it would be like cupping a pool of water in one's hand in the center of a volcano and expecting it not to dissolve into vapor.

There was something down there all right…maybe more than one something.

About five seconds in after Katara had redirected the balloon back on course the different, yet all too familiar swamp decided for a second time that its call was not about to be ignored and like before a wild and swirling sidewinder materialized seemingly out of nothing in the formerly dead wind.

It didn't behave like a normal tornado. It zeroed in on them, a hunter marking its target.

A tornado ripping up the ground below and sucking in the wind above yanked Zuko, Ursa and the baby back by the collar into awareness like nothing else could. Firing his flames against the incoming force would douse them at once; Katara's element would only give the tornado a new weapon to morph it into a monsoon. Despite the powers of the three accomplished benders they lacked the one element that could do anything to help. They needed an airbender, they needed Aang, but since he wasn't available they had to do without. They could only flee. Katara could only man the controls to take evasive maneuvering and Zuko could only amp up the stove's heat to give her fuel to do so.

The rushing streams of the tornado came swirling in fast and deadly.

It lifted the smallest of them off her tiny feet.

"_Keiko!_" Ursa cried, trying to snag her back while her other hand latched onto the basket.

Zuko was quicker and he was closer. Abandoning the stove, without a second thought that he was the only one who could keep it going, he lunged out for the little girl, screaming and wailing as she was stolen away by the fierce winds. He pulled her close. Had the air currents been at their norm he'd have landed with her safely at the very lip of the basket however gravity betrayed him and the two just kept going.

"No! _No!_" Zuko shouted out, whipping his legs through the air as though trying to run back.

"_Zuko!_" Katara cried out after in worry, reaching for him. "_Keiko!_"

There was nothing Ursa could do but stare up in shocked disbelief as the two of her children were swallowed up by the tornado and disappeared from sight among the thrashing currents. Her grip – the only thing preventing her from being sucked out too – loosened. In maternal instinct she wanted to be lifted up after the two in some impossible way to bring them back.

Katara fastened a steel claw over Ursa's grip, sealing off that choice.

With his tiny, painted fingers gripping as the others did, Momo couldn't stay grounded in the balloon and with a frightened squeak he too was carried off despite that he flapped his bat-like wings desperately against the tornado's pull. Again those remaining could only watch. It was cruel but being only humans they could not withstand winds battering at them at thirty-five miles per hour.

An attempted rescue wouldn't have been a rescue at all. It would be a fruitless sacrifice. That thought sunk heavily in the stomachs of the three remaining as the weather-beaten balloon was finally pummeled of too much of its air to keep aloft. Losing altitude fast, it plummeted to the earth and, huddling all together for the fated impact, Katara, Toph and Ursa braced themselves.

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The bottom of the basket he'd been nearer to landing on with every second. When Zuko felt himself pulled up rather than down he'd known that it was over in that same moment, that there would be no wild chance that his foot would just happen to catch on something, that one of the girls would've had the split-second to have caught it and anchored him and Keiko back.

Keiko put up the worst tantrum a toddler could muster as they were tossed and thrown in the funnel like so many leaves and sticks devoured before them and Zuko couldn't blame her. Had he been several years younger no doubt would he have done the same but as bad as the tornado was their luck would make a deep, spiraling downfall once they were lifted from its pull. Around and around the two were pulled in the funnel so that Zuko finally had to close his eyes to keep from feeling nauseous. He pressed Keiko's face to him, covering her eyes so that she too couldn't get sick and relieve that sickness all over the front of his shirt. After only so long circling round and round they were pulled into the outer rungs of the funnel where the wind was not as strong and spat from the tornado now that they'd been thoroughly chewed.

They fell and fell, not to the swamp waiting hundreds of feet below but much closer onto a jutting cliff of earth. That particular formation that lay at the borders of the swamp Zuko had thought they'd passed some time ago and he'd have wondered at the strangeness of being deposited right there but more important matters seized his reins at the ground coming up fast. He curled himself, gripping Keiko close and tucking his head to his collarbone, rolling to minimize impact, but he hit hard all the same and the impacting shoulder spiked with pain. The momentum sent them rolling with force across the vertical plane of rock and, that most his skin was covered with clothing, Zuko was saved some nasty scrapes.

After several rolls they came to a stop and Zuko breathed. He breathed too soon when he found gravity now pulling them horizontally down the sharp decline. The angle steepened and they were pulled down with ever much more force as Zuko whipped onto his side and scrambled in a mad dash for the broadswords strapped to his back.

"_Mommy!_" Keiko cried in fear. "_Mommy!_"

"_Not now!_" Zuko scolded at her distraction, yanking again and again at the first sword hilt he could grasp his hand over, it not yielding to him in that it was snagged in the folds of his shirt, he too stressed to realize the fact.

The cliffside loomed far too close and Zuko's attempts to ground his heels into the surface only made the frail rock crumble in chunks along with them.

Finally, overriding his looming panic, Zuko gave up on the one sword and reached for the other, the less stubborn of the pair unsheathing itself at once just as they had reached their final two feet of ground. Zuko stabbed it deep at he could into the rock just as they fell over the edge. He didn't allow himself a deep exhale of relief that time, wouldn't chance it when with his luck the edge could simply just break off after all his efforts.

In the hand that wasn't his lifeline Zuko swung Keiko back up onto the ledge, albeit slightly too hard on her bottom in his stress. Her whimpers from that he couldn't spare any thought to as he struggled to pull himself up after.

"Don't look down," he seethed to himself.

He'd only managed to pull himself up to his shoulders when he found the toddler's attention span had drifted from a sore bottom to a brightly-colored butterfly-beetle. She waddled after it in glee…to where it flapped along towards a gaping ravine.

"_No!_" he half yelled, half gulped after her but Keiko continued on, much more interested in the pretty creature before her than the cranky one behind. As Zuko struggled against the shifty, unstable rock to pull himself back up Momo landed gracefully nearby.

"Hey, _you!_ Go save the baby!"

Momo turned his wide green orbs to the teen and gurgled.

"Baby!" ordered Zuko again, stabbing a finger to where Keiko toddled along to her doom. "Distract her! Let her pet you! Do _something!_"

Looking beyond the point where Zuko's finger directed, Momo took in the sight of Keiko. He blinked in curiosity and he crept a little further along towards her.

"Good! Good, keep going!"

A distraction to the animal's simple mind came in the form of a second insect…a very plump and delicious-looking specimen.

"_You stupid animal!_" shouted Zuko, wanting to pound the thing when Momo decided to chase after a snack instead. "I just have to do _everything_, don't I!?" he shouted to the skies, daring any spirit in any realm to say otherwise.

His gaze darted back to Keiko and in lack of a better idea sent a sprout of flame her way. If she had any firebender blood in her…

When the sprout drifted out in front of her Keiko slowed to a stop at the new attraction. She looked between it and the butterfly-beetle that was getting further and further away from her. They went in opposite directions, one to safety, one to danger and she couldn't have them both.

"Come on," Zuko prodded as he struggled to lift himself up. "Come on."

Keiko reached a tiny hand to the brilliant flame that loomed before her but Zuko kept it just out of her reach so that she had to follow it. She followed it a few steps but then looked back to the butterfly-beetle with a whine.

"Fire's better than some bug!" He was almost insulted that she'd even reconsidered. Zuko really didn't want to have to torch that insect to get her attention away from it, not when the Avatar himself was so respectful of every living thing, but he would.

"Go to the fire," he kept at under his breath, shoving away the thought that Toph would've had this all under control ages ago, putting up a wall to halt their fall in tracks, erecting a pen around Keiko to keep her from getting into trouble.

In her moment of indecision, when the flame had slowed its way away from her, Keiko scampered after it in one short burst, pouncing on it, trapping it in her hands and claiming it as her own.

Zuko afforded himself that deep exhale, head sinking low in relief.


	4. Chapter 4

The balloon hit a wide pond of swamp with a jolt that sent flying those three that had managed to stay in the basket. Ursa surfaced from the mucky water, albeit with a lily pad running down her long hair, but when Toph didn't Katara dove in after her. The water below was thick with algae and so the waterbender swished her hands to clear it for visibility.

She looked one way and saw nothing. She looked another and saw the little earthbender sinking like a stone.

As she dove Katara had to constantly flick the algae from her way, as the tiny organisms seemed to swarm over and invade any water she'd managed to purify. She felt like an ostrich-horse flicking away flies with a tail but she kept at it until she'd snagged the collar of Toph's shirt.

Katara resurfaced with the coughing girl, Toph clutching hold of her so tightly she might've dragged them both back down, in time to see their transportation claimed by the water.

Katara's expression sunk just as quickly as the balloon. Both a river and a ravine were in their path to the Western Air Temple, short work for the likes of her and Toph, but in them having to walk all the way back the rest of the gang would have to abandon them for any chance of winning the war. As powerful as the Avatar was he wasn't invincible. Katara, Toph and Zuko were some of the rebels' top players; their absence could and would be detrimental...even if Azula didn't manage to reach the palace in time from the solo journey she'd undertaken the last they'd seen her.

A glance to the earthy shore found Ursa dropping to her knees in grief over all that could've happened to her children.

"Hang on, Toph," Katara mumbled, swimming for the both of them.

Being the resident optimist could really be a drag at such times.

Once her feet touched mud Toph leapt from Katara's support, joyous to be back among the element she knew. In one of the few times, Katara wasn't in the least infected by her friend's enthusiasm. She thought ahead to their transportation issues and more locally to the wilted woman before her.

"Ursa," she started, reaching a hand for her shoulder.

"They were just snatched right up," Ursa gasped, her eyes staring past anything that existed as though she were replaying the scene in her head. "So high above the ground, nothing to slow their descent…_Zuko_, _Keiko_…I'd only just gotten them back and now…_now_…"

Katara didn't rise at once to say otherwise for the situation was dire. She decided to say what she thought was the truth. "If I know anything from this past year traveling with the Avatar," – she paused to think back – "I know that Zuko is a survivor."

Eyes beginning to shine over, Ursa shut them tight to keep tears at bay.

"They'll be okay. That guy can take anything you throw at him."

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His head cranked lower and lower and his teeth grinded with such force that he could hear the noise reverberating through his skull. Zuko did so to try and cope with the whining, flailing little demon in his arm, held upside down as he trudged through the muck.

"_Bad! Bad! Bad!_" Keiko shrieked through the dress encircling her head. She'd been saying the same throughout the last hour, seeming to have a selective memory for the rough way she'd previously been held and a sore bottom courtesy of Zuko rather than the time he had only just rescued her from certain doom. "_Keiko want up! Up!_"

"We _tried_ that already!" He brandished his other arm lined with tiny teeth marks. "You can't be trusted!"

"_Waaaah!_"

Zuko felt a patch of heat form on his shoulder and, like he'd done many times before, swatted out the fire.

"Mommy!"

"She's not here."

"Mommy!"

"I'm telling you she's not here! You've just got me!"

"_Bad! Mean!_" Keiko shouted, putting emphasis into every syllable._ "No like! No LIKE!_"

"So I gathered!" he yelled back, putting out another fire to be at his knee in her discontent, sidestepping an upshot of earth from below.

Trying to tune out Keiko's endless complaining, Zuko looked round the swamp they'd found themselves in. The canopy above shielded off all but a few holes of sunlight; all of it looked the same and so every so often he'd slash open an 'X' on a tree to keep from walking in circles. The sludgy water that reached his shins penetrated through the pores of his boots so that he could feel a disgusting squish with every step he took. He tried to focus on a promising direction to take but was met with another distraction.

The insect that had so tempted him on the cliffside had evaded him and so Momo zoomed in a zigzag formation all throughout the path ahead to find something else to satisfy his hunger. He whipped from one side to another, curling up and hissing at a game too large, scrambling after small game that had hidden in a log and blowing into the holes in the wood, making wind notes that sounded most rude.

A deep growl rumbled in Zuko's throat but he kept his mouth shut.

"Bad! Bad! Bad!" Keiko kicked any part of him she could reach.

Momo had cornered a bug but as he went in for the kill it blasted him in the face with a noxious smelling liquid.

With a wild squeak, Momo tumbled out of the tree, squabbling and scratching at the smell. He flew to the other side and, with the reduced visibility, crashed into a hanging of vines, getting stuck and kicking up an even louder ruckus.

Every part of Zuko tightened, hunched inward to keep it in.

Momo snapped the vines through with his sharp little teeth. He rubbed at the liquid obscuring his vision, jumped off to fly again but his formations were loopy and off-kilter like he'd been downing cactus juice again.

Momo didn't make it to the other side for Zuko's free hand flashed out, seizing the little lemur by his long, fuzzy tail.

"Stop being annoying!" he yelled into the lemur's face.

Letting loose a small amount of his anger, Zuko continued to storm through the mucky swamp, Momo bumping along his right leg, Keiko his left, in his irritation showing them the same care as he would to a pair of hunted game. Only too soon would he be able to give them back to those who actually enjoyed their company and only then would he be free of two burdens.

Before that happened though, Keiko popped his last nerve by kicking his sore shoulder.

"You want down so much? Well there you go!" he growled, flipping her over and dumping her right there into the muck. He unhanded Momo too but the lemur was quick to fly to a branch. "Have a nice life!"

Pulling herself up into a sit, Keiko's lips pursed to form a tiny 'o', the first she was struck silent in some time.

Zuko turned from her in one harsh movement. He stomped off from them alone.

The tiny 'o' didn't leave Keiko's lips as she watched him go further and further away with every step. She turned her head to the left, her little pigtails bobbing as she did, and she turned to the right. Everything was slimy and wet and with night closing in branches looked like claws reaching to eat her up.

Keiko made a tiny noise that could've been a squeak or a hiccup. She made a thin, wordless cry after Zuko.

He kept walking.

The toddler piped up louder, putting a shrill sort of whine to it, got to her feet and waded after him through the waterline that reached her collarbone. The mud did plenty more to slow her body down than it did Zuko.

"Zzzz!" she cried after him, stumbling, trying to catch up but with her little legs she could breach little of the distance between.

His form was several feet off and beginning to be claimed by the shadows of the night.

"_Zzzz!_" Keiko cried again, her voice straining with desperation as the mud hindered her so that she could barely plant one foot in front of the other.

Deciding only then that he had proved his point, Zuko stopped, not for a moment intending on abandoning her no matter how upset he was. His father may have raised Azula in such a cruel manner but it was not the way he'd been brought up by Iroh. Katara would've yelled at him until she was blue in the face but, as young as she was, Keiko was still old enough to be taught a certain amount of respect.

When he walked back for her Keiko's face lit up like a sunbeam, an expression he'd never thought she'd have directed to him. She reached out her pudgy arms to be lifted up again, her happy, happy face deceiving that she could have ever acted as naughty as she had. By itself that face of hers managed to melt away some of Zuko's bad feelings. "I've got a lot of grown-up stuff to take care of," he said softly as he walked, "so you've got to be a good girl for me now, okay?"

"Good girl! Good girl!" Keiko agreed, nodding her head so vigorously it might've dislodged from her neck.

"You're not just saying that?"

"Mmmm!" She shook her head in that same way.

"All right," Zuko consented but when he'd gotten to the two foot mark separating them the sight of a catfish-gator sent him jolting back in his soles. As quickly as he'd drawn back he dove forward after but it was too late. The gator snapped its jaws over the hem of Keiko's little dress and dragged her under so fast that the water covered her scream off halfway.

He dove for that very spot but surfaced with nothing, the gator having sped away.

"Oh no! No, no!" he said back to himself, wringing his head in disbelief. "Keiko! Keiko, where are you!?"

While the channel was wide it was some ways off that it parted off into two different directions and from the currents in the water Zuko knew the thing hadn't double-backed on him. He couldn't afford the mud weighing him down so jumped onto the higher ground in chase, straining his eyes in the darkening night for any sign of bubbles on the water's surface.

"Keiko!" he shouted, cupping his hands over his mouth to carry the cry. He didn't know how long her little lungs could retain air.

The night continued to drone its croaking melody of animal calls.

"Give me a sign!"

A pillar of earth blasted out of the water and for a moment Zuko glimpsed a scaly tail.

"That'll do!" And without a second's delay Zuko made a running leap from the tree roots, holding back his arm only to swing it forward in full force in a flaming fist onto the gator's back.

The force of the blow made the reptile release its prey and when it tried to reclaim her Zuko pounded it hard on the snout. He ordered Keiko to the trees and she scrambled to do so without complaint. She covered her eyes when she heard him draw his swords.

Shivering like a leaf and wet, Keiko kept her eyes covered even as the terrible creature's fights were suddenly cut short. She turned her head, using her ears only, and what she heard were footsteps splashing nearer before stopping before her.

The girl gave a shrill cry and jumped into his arms so that Zuko had to drop his swords just to catch her.

"It's okay," he assured, patting her little back awkwardly as she wailed so hard that her whole body shook. "You're okay now."

She didn't stop and Zuko didn't know what magic words could make it all better, words that his mother, Katara, even Uncle Iroh were sure to know. He did what he thought he'd have wanted had their roles been reversed and just rocked her, continuing to say that it was okay now.

Whatever Zuko had been doing to console her, the process it seemed was far too slow for the environment they were in and they had attracted the attention of the locals. Yellow eyes of all sizes glared from the shadows all around, looking only at them.

Zuko's mouth stretched back in a grimace. One firebender could only handle so much, not a whole legion of terrible, nasty swamp-beasts, not with only one free arm to spare.

"Keiko," he whispered out of the side of his mouth. "Keiko, shhh. Be quiet now."

She continued on and on. He heard snarls and growls, saw scales and claws emerge, all drawn in by the cry of easy game.

They were getting closer.

"Quiet!" he hissed, trying to cover her mouth. "You said you'd be good for me. I'm telling you now, be quiet." But nothing he said made Keiko calm down, not after what she had survived. The way things were going they'd have escaped one set of jaws only to be caught by another.

Zuko gulped and he closed his eyes as he held her. He couldn't believe it had come to this but he wasn't going to hesitate.

"Leaves from the vine," he crooned with all the elegance of a bullfrog, rocking her.

A hiccup rose in between Keiko's sobs.

"Falling so slow," he continued, hoping, "like fragile, tiny shells drifting in the foam,"

She continued to sob but the intensity dwindled down to whimpers.

"Little soldier girl," he adjusted the lyrics, "come marching home. Brave soldier girl…comes marching home."

Exhausted from her forceful crying and being dragged under without air, the little girl sunk onto his chest. She hadn't the energy to give him any more grief that night. Zuko wondered if maybe she had heard that song before from their mother, reflected that his uncle sang it much better.

A good number of the beasts that had been closing in seemed to lose interest now that the potential prey was no longer projecting so strong a signal and Zuko set the bolder ones running with a blast of his flames all around.

Not trusting the swamp, nor to leave Keiko alone even within his sight, Zuko undid the sash around his waist and, after several tries, constructed a carrier to strap her to his back, something more comfortable for the both of them. He stripped the catfish-gator only of the meat he could carry, knowing nature would finish off the remains and, making sure Momo was tailing them, started off.

"All right," said Zuko to his two wards after they'd found a place to set camp, "if you're going to be traveling with me there're some things we've got to get straight: first, no making me sing _ever_ again; second, I'm group leader so what I say goes; last-" – he fixed Keiko with a serious look – "you, young lady, are _not_ to set me on fire anymore, not for any reason. Got it?"

Keiko cooed, rocking back on her feet, as if wondering why he were still holding onto that unpleasantness when she'd sent it away long ago.

Zuko fed the two cubes of gator meat, saving the largest portion for his larger stomach. He lay down to sleep right there, using his arm as a pillow, trying to get comfortable on the great slab of rock. He heard little feet patter up to him, heard her plop down next to him.

"I don't know any stories," he grumbled, not even opening his eyes.

"Zzzz…" Keiko seemed to be trying to push out the rest of it, needing help.

He blinked his eyes open, looked at her. "Zu – ko," he said slowly, emphasizing both syllables.

"Zzzzu…" she tried again, determined to get it right.

"Zuko," he repeated patiently. "The last part is the same as yours."

It all came out in one burst. "Zuzu!"

His face creased when he heard that dreaded nickname, the one that Azula had made a show of taunting him with for so long, making him feel less and less like the elder of the two. He'd been about to tell Keiko to keep at it until he saw how she swelled in pride for her accomplishment.

"Yeah, fine," he grumbled and as she plunked down into a spread-eagle position beside him, asleep before she'd even hit the ground, Zuko found that, spoken in Keiko's voice, the nickname didn't much bother him all too much.

That wasn't to say though that he intended on extending that generosity to anyone else.


	5. Chapter 5

Zuko wouldn't have known it was morning through the canopy blocking out most of the light but as the sun drew higher into the sky the tiny ray of light shining down on his waist shifted its angle with each passing hour. It shone, as sunbeams seem prone to do, atop his eyelid.

With a groan, Zuko rolled over onto his side and slept another hour. He woke fairly well rested for sleeping on top of a slab rock but his groggy mind thought it better than sleeping in the belly of that catfish-gator. A glance down showed Momo snoring, limbs stretched high like a bug on its back, and Zuko wondered if the little lemur had crawled his way onto him some time last night to share warmth, if he'd sent Momo falling into that position from his rolling over. He half expected to see Keiko up next to him too, being of the same mind as the lemur, and he silently grumbled over forgetting to add a fourth rule to prohibit any cuddling.

She wasn't where he had left her.

Zuko snapped into full attention that instant, whipping his head round in every direction. "Oh, come on! Not again!"

He'd been preoccupied before but now he couldn't deny that the swampland was thick with the presence of spirits: an area of the Fire Nation where the borders of the two worlds lay thin. If a catfish-gator had jumped at the chance for an easy meal, plenty of spirits would line up behind.

As big as the stone slab was, when it neared the water on the upper portion it made a sharp dip and so Keiko's pigtails – the highest part of her head – could not be seen. She'd been stirring her fingers in the water after some multi-colored firefly-like spirits when she heard her brother's exclamation.

Keiko popped her head up to see what was going on.

She saw Zuko pacing in anxiety, looking every which way. When Zuko jumped off the rock she scampered after, looking all around as he did to help find whatever he'd lost, and so distracted was Zuko that he never noticed the echoing set of footsteps behind him. He searched and he parted branches, seeking out tiny nooks where a toddler could hide.

Keiko stopped whenever he stopped. She didn't know what to look for and so explored more thoroughly than he in efforts to help. Keiko had only just managed to overturn a small boulder to look beneath when Zuko started up again. She toddled after but, with her smaller height, noticed on the way something he did not – a tiny nashi pear – and she went after it at once, losing interest in searching.

Upon reaching it, Keiko saw with dismay that up close it was much tinier than she'd first thought and had the stink of rot.

She looked further up and beamed.

There was a much larger specimen of the sandy-colored fruit, so fat that the stem holding it looked near to snapping. It was perfect and Keiko wanted it, nevermind whatever game Zuko was playing. She reached her arms high, reached higher so that they strained in their sockets, jumped and snapped her teeth at the peak of her jump all in effort to snag it.

"There you are," sighed Zuko, scooping Keiko up in an arm. "I told you to stay on the rock!"

Keiko whined. She hadn't disobeyed any rules. All Zuko would've had to do was to have called her name to clarify things but that was dwarfed in her need to have that nashi pear. She squirmed and whined and cried, "Pear!"

"Oh…breakfast. That was easy." But when Zuko reached out Keiko balked that he reached for the wrong one.

"No! No!" And Keiko practically came down in a seizure in her squirming.

"What now?"

"Eh! Eh! Eh!" Repeatedly she jabbed her finger at the _right_ one until Zuko saw what she saw and with his height advantage he easily plucked it from the tree. Again Keiko balked when he breathed on it as if to take a first bite, fumed when Momo landed on Zuko's shoulder with hungry eyes.

"_Mine!_" she screamed in greed, diving out of Zuko's grip and snatching from him the pear.

"Hey! That thing's like as big as your head, Keiko! There's no way you can-!"

"_Mine!_" Keiko insisted louder, wrapping not only her arms around it but the rest of her little body as well. A tower of dirt spiraled out of the ground around her to shield off invaders.

"Isn't this a bit much?" Zuko said, trying to reason with a small child.

When she didn't answer he put a fist to the structure (which he barely had to tap) and it all came tumbling down. Looking down he saw disturbed dirt and he sent a hand down, pulling Keiko from the ground, making her dress flutter around her in such a way that he could've been uprooting an oversized flower.

By then Momo too noticed how fine the fruit was and sunk his little paws over it in challenge. As he and Keiko fought with plenty of energy and noise Zuko sat down before them and ate a couple of smaller pears. Only when they were chewed down to the pips did he break up the squabble by bringing a leg down hard and fast to separate the two. Keiko and Momo fell back to avoid it and each, with a squawk, saw the pear roll right into Zuko's waiting hand. From a squawk, Keiko gave a yelp of indignation when Zuko ruined the perfection of _her_ fruit by cutting it in half. She glared at the ground, radiating fury with all the energy of a toddler, but was made to look back at Zuko when he gave Momo half and not her.

She pounded her fists and the earth shook. "Zuzu, pear _mine!_"

"Be patient. You still have your baby teeth and its flesh is tough, I'm just going to-"

Keiko didn't care to hear the rest of whatever he was going to say. With a jealous glare, she made to sneak over and snatch Momo's half but without looking up from his work Zuko barred her way with the leg that separated the two. No matter how she moved he was always right there to block her. Finally, after many failed attempts, Keiko dove over his calf halfway, made to climb the rest of the way…and was lifted into the air.

"Wah! Keiko hungry!" she moaned as she dangled in the air, trying to keep a grip on him to keep from falling.

Zuko spared her a glance from his grinding the pear into a chunky sauce. He looked back at his work.

Pouting as she watched Momo making a sheep-pig of himself, Keiko sagged in the air until she felt the leg that kept her prisoner start to waver. It started to jiggle her side to side, up and down, never in the same pattern.

Realizing what he was doing, Keiko giggled and held tight for the ride. Zuko even smiled a little too.

"All right Kei, all finished. Here you go."

The fruit tasted just as divine as it looked and Keiko ate it all up, even licked the residue off the crude rock plate.

As she and Momo licked their tiny hands of any excess juice, Zuko looked back the way they'd come, figuring the others had to be around somewhere. Dangling on the edge of a cliff, he'd not the luxury of being able to look back to see where the balloon had crash landed and he hadn't the technical skills like Sokka to track their trajectory at the rate and angle at which the balloon fell. Still, Zuko thought to head for where he'd seen the spiral of smoke rising from the trees. That gave them some direction at least.

He was able to strap Keiko to his back with no trouble and thought for a moment that maybe he _wasn't_ really the worst babysitter ever.

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At an inlet of swamp where the water reached their knees Toph and Ursa stood crouched and ready where it connected to the rest of body of water. Toph was pumped and into the game completely, swaying on her toes in anticipation, while Ursa mimicked the actions with less drive, feeling somewhat silly. Both were hungry and didn't abandon their posts.

Katara's movements in the inlet were very slow and deliberate since the large fish they'd managed to corner was a quick, little devil. It had already evaded at least five of her attempts to trap it. The swamp time and again resisted her attempts to purify it to increase visibility but she was one up on the fish in that it thought that it had a good cover.

Focusing in on the ripples, the disturbances in the water's flow, Katara could gauge the general location of the fish throughout the murky water though not with the dead-on precision of Toph, who'd been doing as such with her own element for years.

She lifted her leg up. She paused and then planted it slowly.

"Now!" Katara shouted suddenly, having it right where she wanted it. She fired off a stream of water bubbles at the resulting splashes from her shout, criss-crossing them randomly to try and snag the fish. A bubble caught the tip of its dorsal fin for a moment but before Katara could enlarge the bubble the fish had already jet away.

"Darn it!"

The massive, gulping monster of a fish, practically the size of Keiko, sliced through the water with ease while Katara did her best to try and nab it with her bubbles, ill-equipped even as a waterbender for the speed to catch it with her hands.

It headed straight for Toph and Ursa.

"Mmm, I can taste fish already!" Toph almost swooned over the thought. In that she wasn't touch-blind she could pick up some of the same disturbances in the water as Katara did. Neither girl was a slouch but neither were they too practiced with it and a number of times the fish slipped through their fingers, even once when they'd double-teamed it, Toph nailing it with a spike of hardened mud, Katara with a bubble.

Though it had most likely never had to evade human hunters, the fish it seemed was a natural escape artist. It escaped for a time past counting and went for the exit, never detecting Ursa, whom had barely shifted position this whole time.

"It's coming right for you!"

"Destroy the little beast!" Toph yelled after, a growl from her stomach backing up that claim.

How exactly she was supposed to that Ursa wasn't sure. Quickly estimating the size of the oncoming fish, she sidestepped onto the other side of the opening in hopes that the fish's estimation skills were not so great and that it would beach itself on the shallower end. She guarded the deeper end, ready to stomp it or trap it between her calves as it passed. The fish went for the swallow end to evade her but decided in mid-stroke that it was indeed too shallow and so made a breakneck change of direction.

They weren't sure how it happened but Ursa fell back into the water with a great splash. To her great dismay, upon surfacing on the shallow end she found the fish sucking onto one of her legs up to the knee as though the leg was an overgrown worm.

There were some that could tolerate a slimy, flailing beast-fish banging its gums away at their flesh, swallowing most of their leg, but Ursa wasn't one of them. Her face grew taut. She could only hold out a few seconds for the girls before she started yelping and thrashing that leg to get the disgusting animal off, momentarily forgetting all else.

Katara and Toph hurried but they were too late. The fish was thrown and as soon as it touched the water it was gone.

"Oh no!" Katara whined after their would-be meal; Toph seconded that with the additional grumbling comment that such things were only funny when they happened to Sokka.

Backing herself up onto dry land, Ursa had the grace for some embarrassment. "I'm sorry."

It was bitter roots again like it had been for every meal between the current time and when they had first crash landed. Katara and Ursa, via air-bubble helmets, may have been able to have retrieved from the sunken balloon material possessions but their food had all been gobbled up by the creatures that swam below before they could reach it.

Grumpily, Toph plugged her mouth with a root, trying to swallow it before she could taste its bitterness, trying to lie to her taste buds in that it was actually sweet fish flesh. Her tongue wasn't fooled.

They hadn't seen where Zuko and Keiko had ended up whenever the tornado had spat them out, having been too busy trying to keep from crashing, and, for all the view they'd seen from Toph's thirty-foot erected plateau, the trees were too thick to see very much of what lay below. The swamp was looming with the presence of spirits, at times so thickly that it was like sifting through a fog, but the three kept to themselves and so far had remained unheeded. With the logic that Zuko had to be out there somewhere looking for them they moved through the swamp which, like the one previously, had a massive mother tree that gave life to the whole: a good meeting place if there were one to be had. After that they'd…

Katara's body shook with a silent scowl. She didn't know what to do then.

"May-beh we cou ooze Momo as a meh-ssengrrr," said Toph, her words half garbled through her attempts to chew the tough root. "Haw-kee has-ent come bakk yet."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Katara scolded, pulling the root free from the younger girl's mouth so they could have a real conversation. The two tossed around plenty of suggestions, each worse than the last until some time in they found that Ursa had stopped in place.

"Ursa? Is something wrong?"

"I've been meaning to speak with you." The woman opened her eyes and Katara startled back when she saw that the hue had changed from brown to grey. "It seems that I've caught up."

Whoever she was she was no longer Ursa.

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Like a beating heart the fist-sized flame throbbed, the only object of Zuko's bending, wanting to grow and engorge itself much, much larger. Zuko kept it contained with every beat, his element that moved and reacted like a living thing.

Where he kept it shielded with both hands, Zuko removed one when he'd calmed it down…at least as calm as it was going to get.

"Be careful, Kei," he cautioned when Keiko, who stared at nothing but the dancing fire, reached out a little hand to touch it. It didn't burn her as it would've burned a baby from another nation but gave another throb of yielding to the bender.

Keiko drew back with her own little lick of flame, intrigued by her brother's fire that did not go out as swiftly as hers. She blew on it, giving in to the fire's desire to grow. Another blow and Zuko siphoned off the excess back into his larger flame.

With big, brown eyes, Keiko looked up to him with a pouty lip that would've positively melted Katara.

"You handle that bit first," he said, not swayed. "If I'm to even consider training you than you need to take err…_baby_ steps." He'd not said that last part to be cute. It had just sort of come out that way.

"Bleh!" The little girl stuck out her tongue.

Zuko let her play with the fire for a while longer, letting her get used to it, siphoning it off if it ever got too large (for in her excitement it never got too small). Too young was Keiko to understand that firebending was all about the breath and the burden only firebenders carried in that if their element ever got away from them that its hunger that seemed so small at present could devour and scorch everything within miles to the ground.

All could be started by that tiny flame between them.

"That's enough now," Zuko decided right then; he'd let her play for some time. He flicked his hand and the flame he'd made went out. He reached his hand for Keiko's.

"Mine!"

"Give it," he insisted, trying for patience. After a third try on his part, Keiko reluctantly handed her flame over where it too was put out.

Thinking it over as he strapped her onto his back, for a lack of something better, he handed back to her a stone he'd stubbed his toe into earlier as a toy. Even if he were promoting Toph's earth over his fire, Zuko would regret it later had he given into Keiko's wishes. An accidental throw of the lick of flame onto Zuko's hair couldn't, as much as Keiko believed otherwise, be made all better again even by her sweetest "I'm sorry" smile.

Keiko played with her rock, reforming into different-shaped clumps, as she bounced along on Zuko's back.

With a shriek, she suddenly threw it.

"What're you-?" But Zuko finished the would-be sentence with a gasp at what he saw behind them, what had frightened Keiko so. He didn't stop the few seconds to question or try to fight. He picked up the pace into a run.


	6. Chapter 6

I just got one of those cute Appa plushies that's so hard to find. So soft! Yea Mall of America's Nickelodeon Universe! Much better than stupid Peanuts! Blah! Anyone know how to get the site to listen to your spacing commands? I can't seem to separate different subplots. Oh and if you haven't checked it out yet be sure to visit my profile page for a cute picture of the Halloween costume I designed for my dog Indy as a fun little art project.

mT – Many thanks and I like your cute smilies too. Wouldn't have been fun if I'd have revealed what Zuko and Keiko saw before but you'll find out now below. Ugh, fish are gross, especially monster ones. I'd probably freak out worse than Ursa. 

FireChildSlytherin5 – Really sweet to be listed on your C2 and that you're sharing my story to others. Didn't want the Zuko/Keiko moments to be too predictable or overdone so glad you like it. I'll be sure to keep updating!

Liooness – Though I dearly like messing with Zuko, the storyline progresses in this chapter. He'd be such a good, protective big brother if he'd ever had the chance, I think.

razzledazzle41191 – I was hoping I wasn't overdoing the humorous elements of the story; I tend to lean towards humor if you haven't noticed. :p Glad to see that you're still reading!

Thank you four very much for your continuous feedback! You're the best!

Please don't be shy to review, other readers, it only takes a couple minutes and the good vibes make me want to update the chapters all that much faster! I think this is the longest chapter I've written so far. ;)

Arual-san

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From his strict regimen of training Zuko was the faster but not by very much. Irritation at taking the coward's route in running away – as he'd done only the day before over the masses of swamp beasts – had been pushed to the corners of his mind in effort to evade what chased them. He couldn't afford a lapse in concentration, not when the water at his knees stole even a small bit of the speed he so needed.

Their pursuer had no such resistance in the air.

Behind him he shot off a wall of fire, not to attack, nor would it last long enough to work as a shield, but it bought him the seconds needed to slip away.

Zuko backed his side into a tree. Forgoing the gentleness commonly shown to a female babe, he reached a hand back to roughly tousle Keiko's head and quiet her whimpers, for whimpers were all she could utter at the sight of the unknown stressor.

He kept perfectly still, even down to his feet when a single splash could give them away.

Chancing it, he peered out beyond the bark.

Save the glowing eyes that burned as red as ember, it was the very same face-without-a-body spirit which he had knelt before whilst in meditation on his old Fire Nation ship so many months back but this one was real. It was called a kuwanji – a bloodthirsty beast all fire and rage – however it did not belong in the human realm, seeing as the rock Keiko had thrown had passed right through it.

"B-bad?" Keiko squeaked in the quietest tone he'd heard her speak.

"Bad," Zuko confirmed, not taking his eyes off it, "_very_ bad."

The teen didn't particularly care nor want to find out why such a fire demon was terrorizing a swamp instead of a volcano, nor to tempt its terrible teeth upon them. He just wanted them to part ways with their own business but somehow didn't see that option becoming available.

Thinking it through, he found himself torn between two even worse options.

If Zuko continued to run Keiko would always be in a dangerously vulnerable position at his back. If he were to stop and fight he might compromise her safety even more. Her extra weight was something he wasn't tempered to and would put him at a disadvantage. If he could help it, no burn would ever scorch her soft skin. In the swamp that swarmed with beasts unseen, he didn't trust to set her nearby, to look away from her from a second.

The kuwanji caught sight of him again.

"Okay," thought Zuko aloud to himself as he ran, "they're both bad options. Which one is worse?" He'd have never thought he'd have had to fit a baby into his calculations. "_Arrgh_, what would Uncle do?"

He dodged a blast of fire and Keiko screamed at the close call.

"What about Katara – freeze it in a block of ice?" He dodged again. "_Great_, I'll just _do_ that!"

If Katara was in his place he was sure she wouldn't even be in this mess, as the demon seemed to be attracted to his flames and repelled at the same time in that they heated the air around it uncomfortably.

He threw off the kuwanji again and clutched his forehead as though suffering a great migraine.

"Sorry, Kei…" Feeling that he was losing what little good babysitter karma he'd managed to collect, Zuko unstrapped Keiko and set her inside a hollow tree trunk, fastening her in there by knotting up vines. He stuffed Momo in with her so at least she wouldn't be alone.

Completely silent, Keiko stared at him with wide brown eyes.

"Be good," Zuko instructed, making himself look away as he covered the opening.

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With the very different aura and feeling that now seemed to emit off Ursa, Katara and Toph backed away. Her eyes shone a slate gray and even a smaller detail that was her posture had toned down from straight-backed and regal to a more relaxed, loose-shouldered stance.

"Please let me explain," she said, making no move forward, granting them their space.

Unsure, Katara summoned up a ball of water at her palm. Although Ursa spoke in the same voice even the woman's speech patterns were a world apart from her norm and none of this boded well in Katara's eyes.

"What brought _this_ on?" Toph wondered from her side, perplexed. She'd not seen this coming...whatever it was. "Run into this before, Katara?"

"No, this is new."

"You said that other swamp messed with you guys' heads, right? Aang saw me, you saw your mom and Sokka saw that moon girl. Maybe this is just another illusion wrapped around Ursa? I mean, so many of the circumstances are the same and-"

"I don't think this is an illusion, Toph."

"Well, what gives then?" Toph continued on, in her need to know ignoring Ursa, the subject and one that could've answered that very question. "We've been exposed to this swamp just as much as her. If she's weirding out on us does that mean we're next for tentacles growing out of our shoulders or our feet turning into flippers? Help me out here; I've never been in some weirdo swamp before."

"_This_ is an entirely different swamp, no matter the similarities. I'm hardly an expert on the matter."

"Hey wait, I know!" Toph suddenly exclaimed, snapping her fingers. "It was that fish! Ursa got her leg bit up by that monster fish! Maybe it infected her or something! Maybe it was a were-fish and she'll start growing gills and-!"

"She's not a were-fish!"

"Myths are based on fact and I've seen plenty of strange things! Do you have a better idea? Do you think she has a whole crowd of personalities in that brain of hers?"

"Just because I haven't come up with an explanation yet doesn't mean-"

"So quick to discredit _my_ ideas and yet _you_ can't even come up with one."

"Oh please, you can't really believe that she's a were-fish."

Toph shrugged. "The were part could be a disease like any other, just blown out of proportion."

"Wouldn't she sprout fish whiskers? Wouldn't her eyes go yellow instead of grey?"

"_Hello!_ I don't _do_ colors here!"

As she watched them continue on in, a slight discontent showing in a crease between her brows, Ursa sifted through the water to sit upon an overgrown tree root and wait it out. She herself was well versed in the art of patience and composure from many long years of meditation amongst fresh mountain air. As very old as she was, time was not an issue; she could wait as long as it took for the girls to settle.

Settle they did only when both headstrong girls ran out of steam to blow on each other.

Almost of one mind, they turned in unison back to Ursa.

"All right, lady," Toph put bluntly, putting authority into her young voice, "what's going on here? Stick to the truth."

In her time of waiting peaceably on the tree root Ursa had attracted the interest of a wide-beaked warbler and it had perched on her finger, as tame as a pet shop animal. She stroked its feathers. The animals of the swamp may not have ever had any contact with humans but for a wild bird to just cuddle up to her with no fear at all was just a little too much for the girls to take in without suspicion.

"Where is Ursa?" Katara demanded to know, her uncertainty of whether to strike now or hold out for an answer making her hand holding the water twitch anxiously.

"She is perfectly safe within the corners of her subconscious," Ursa explained with calmness as though that much was perfectly reasonable. "My flesh and bone have been reclaimed by the earth several centuries ago. I only need to borrow her body."

"Borrow?" Katara choked midway on the word. "You're _borrowing_ someone's _body_?"

"Only for a short while I assure you. I can only do so over the body of one that carries the bloodline of any past or present incarnation of the Avatar and since Lady Ursa was the only one currently available-"

"Say _what!?_" Toph squawked, more bird-like than anything that the actual bird had chirped as of yet. "Zuko and Aang aren't _cousins_, are they?! Not – not _Azula_ too?!" The idea of them all coming together for family gatherings made her shudder.

"A distant relation," Ursa clarified. "I'm afraid there isn't an actual title for it but through Avatar Roku Lady Ursa and her three children descend."

"We don't have to believe anything you say!" Katara proclaimed, her shout making the bird flee. "Who are you to make such claims anyway?! Tell me why we shouldn't attack right now and _force_ you out of that body?!"

"Force is not necessary. I am not hurting her. I only need to-"

"Answer the question!" Katara returned now with full force, coiling a whip of water round her back into either hand, Toph joining in on picking up on Katara's stress by kicking up a boulder to hover before her.

"Calm yourselves," the woman borrowing Ursa felt she had to say (and the girls were pretty sure by her patterns of speech that she was a woman). "All this time while your group has been taking shelter in the temple of my birth I have longed to speak with you but however near you were I could not. Avatar Aang did not unlock the final chakra and so I had no way of communicating with him."

"What are you saying?" Katara drew out slowly, her anxiety not lowering.

"You _know_ who I am," she said with a small smile. "You are smart girls."

The image of the statue carved by idolizing hands that towered several feet above all else in the Western Air Temple surfaced in Katara's mind. Toph could not make out the features of the woman with a wide shaved forehead that bore the same blue arrow as their little monk friend.

"Avatar…Yangchen?"

Ursa nodded and as she did Katara could very nearly make out behind her fleshy outlines the ghostly image of the long dead Avatar. When she blinked the outline was gone and there was only Ursa with those unfamiliar eyes.

"Any spirit could still claim the same." Toph drew her jaw up with a stubborn set. "Any spirit with the right information could take advantage, turn the scales of the war in their favor. Why don't you prove it?"

Ursa gave a small sigh. "I remember when skepticism was a concept unheard of to the people."

"We're waiting."

"I would prefer not to," replied Ursa point blank. "There can only be one Avatar in this world at a time; my simply being here in this form is pushing the limits enough as is. That she is not born with the ability to bend, the lady Ursa's body would suffer some strain. Also the current Avatar's powers would become temporarily void."

"Eh, those two are tougher than they look." Toph shrugged off with ease. "You need to earn some credibility points, Ms. Avatar, so get crackin'."

"Don't be so hasty, Toph," Katara cut in, feeling this was all moving too fast. "We should think this through."

"What's there to think through? We just need a quick little demonstration to make sure we're not getting suckered into anything. Eight seconds tops. What could happen in eight seconds?"

While Katara still looked very unsure about the whole affair, Toph nodded to Ursa the go-ahead and, after a few moments concentration in a body not designed to bend, slender fingers lifted Katara's water and Toph's earth right out from under their distracted attentions.

Avatar Yangchen spun earth and water on her hands like a craftsman on a loom, in her borrowed eyes a far away gaze. She let go the two elements back into the swamp from whence they came and spun the same with the siblings of air and fire. Those too she let go.

"Is this adequate?" she asked of the two, the sides of her lips pulling into a grin.

Katara was convinced, bowing her head in respects, forcibly doing the same to Toph's head when the other girl hesitated.

"I assume that you were the one who umm…_invited_ us here," Katara ventured, being generous at their less than pleasant arrival.

"I recognize that tone, young lady," Yangchen returned but in her voice was no hint of disapproval. "Both times I appealed to those with whom I share a connection and yet both times I was ignored. You, Katara, I'd have thought would have learned from your mistake."

A hint of pink colored Katara's cheeks in that she hadn't given a better protest against Toph. "So then…the things that happened in that other swamp?"

"I won't be so arrogant to claim credit for everything that occurred there but, yes, with the aid of some spirit friends of mine, I _did_ arrange that occasion. Roku and Kyoshi are more upfront with the help they provide the young Avatar. I prefer to remain anonymous."

"You…" she started, in that the attention hadn't been exclusively for Aang, "you showed me my mother…and Sokka saw Yue…"

"I am sorry," said Yangchen and she truly was at taking in the sorrow Katara fought to conceal. "I didn't mean to sadden you so but to remind you that those lost along the way are never truly lost. The love your mother left behind in you and your brother flourishes; it gives you the strength to keep standing in trying times such as these." She paused and she looked at Katara directly. "It helps ease the burden that no twelve year old boy ought to bear."

Katara sniffed at the heartfelt words and her hand closed over her mother's engagement necklace. Before Katara had taken notice Yangchen was there beside her and laying a gentle hand over Katara's free one. "Kya is at peace. She has been reborn into a kind and loving family."

Katara needed a moment with her feelings and so Toph stepped forward, asked what needed to be asked. "For an Avatar who prides herself on working behind the scenes you're being awfully upfront in possessing that body. If you brought us here does that mean you have some sort of message?"

"I don't have the time to work in my preferred manner," she said. "Yes, I have a message, two in fact. My brothers and sisters of the temples…not all was lost."

"Aang…" And Toph was struck nearly speechless, "he's not alone?"

Yangchen shook her head. "Those survivors are in hiding, scattered across the four worlds as any other civilians. Air nomads are in-tuned enough with the world to all be benders and so I can reach out to them all. There are some that won't fight…others will."

"_Sweetest of sweet!_" Toph beamed, bouncing on her muck-covered toes. "Take _that_, ya stinkin' Fire Nation!"

On the other hand, Katara's mood was still mixed between excitement and old sadness. "The other message – is it about Zuko? Is he all right?"

"I've been able to sense him _somewhere_ in the area, just _where_ exactly I've not yet pinpointed." Yangchen continued on to her second message, "I've actually taken a couple of travelers under my wing in this very swamp; rejected beings whom I'm sure would like to relocate." As more of an afterthought she remarked to herself that it had taken quite some luring to draw them there. "You may have seen the smoke rising from their fire."

"We'll be sure to drop in on them."

With a smile Yangchen drew her hand, beckoning them to follow. "I'll bring you to them."

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Leaving Keiko behind was similar to running himself through with one of his broadswords. Her wide-eyed expression of not wanting to be left behind burned on the backs of Zuko's eyelids every time he blinked. But he couldn't blink, not in excess when the kuwanji was on his tail. No matter how he ran it was always right there behind him, firing away.

Finally, seeing an opening, Zuko blocked off the flames that would've scorched his shoulders and faced the creature head-on. It could only speak he knew in grunts and growls but its wild expression did all the talking for it in that it had no intent to retreat and despite its small size Zuko was no fool to underestimate it. He waited for it to attack and blocked the blow with a broadsword. He did so several times, studying the way it moved, absorbing any attack it made into the swords until they burned bright orange.

As soon as it came within range, Zuko slashed at the kuwanji. He thought he'd missed until he saw a lock of its mane drift down to the water. He slashed again and again, trying to make contact with the speedy demon, going between that and his regular firebending depending on its height.

If he could just hit it once…

He thought he had it when he struck again but to his astonishment the kuwanji whipped round so rapidly it seemed to flash. It seized the swords in its teeth, and being borne of fire, reabsorbed its failed attempts like a food source.

Zuko hesitated for only a second but that second was all it took for the kuwanji to disarm him of his weapon by spitting the swords out into a tree. Being a bender he was never weaponless and continued to try and land a blow, becoming the main attacker while the kuwanji drifted above. He only realized when he'd begun to pant out of nearing exhaustion that the creature was not all teeth and rage but clever as well.

It had cornered him into an inlet thick with trees.

Blocking off the only exit, the kuwanji dove for him in the cramped space. Zuko shot with his left and his right two fire blasts to fend it off but so intent was it this time that as the flames passed through its transparent body it ignored the discomfort.

Out of ideas, having only a half second to think, Zuko dropped gracelessly into the water. There were no reeds to use for air so the solution was only very temporary. All he could think of to do in that short time to think was to pop out all at once, attack and make a dash for the exit.

When he surfaced it was gone.

Looking round with suspicion, he skipped step two and went onto three. He'd only been planting his foot down in his third step when the kuwanji dove down from the canopy directly before him, banana-sized teeth open wide.

It was too close, coming in faster than his eyes could trace.

All that he could manage was an alarmed yell.


	7. Chapter 7

Thought that mask in Zuko's meditation room would be a fun concept to work with and here's the continuation. Thanks to FireChildSlytherin5 and Liooness for sharing their thoughts. mT – Always thought it would be cool to see Kuruk and Yangchen in the series more often. Glad to hear you approve of the progression and yes you're right about the kuwanji. Aang, Zuko and Azula at a family reunion – HA!

Arual-san

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The world was made up in all in every shade of red created and no other color. The clouds that were the only thing to break it up were stretched thin across the horizon but that was just it, all that Zuko could make out was that horizon, no land or water laid below. As he looked down he couldn't seem to recognize where it was his flesh and bone body was. All that remained intact was his mind and even that was thick in a haze.

"_Dreaming_…" Zuko murmured thickly, wondering half-consciously whether he was thinking it or uttering it past the lips he couldn't locate.

In the red world that could've extended on forever both up and down in the complexity of a human mind Zuko couldn't be sure how deep in he was in his subconscious. He figured though that the way out, now that he'd realized the world wasn't real, was to will himself to float to the surface. It could've taken an hour, it could've taken several. With the world that never changed form it was only a matter of time before he zoned out entirely out of pure boredom, waiting for it to end.

Slits of new scenery grabbed his attention by the reins. As soon as he saw it, Zuko held tight and soon he was groggily coming to.

Zuko found himself sprawled out on his back across the water's surface in the same place where the last thing he could remember was that awful demon rushing towards him. He could've easily drowned in the mere two-foot deep water: a poor way to end it all after all that he had been through.

He sluggishly moved his head side to side, clutching it as he did, but he saw no sign of the kuwanji. He might've wanted to blast the canopy above to flush it out of hiding if it were to play the same trick but he didn't want to set the whole swamp on fire in the process.

Still looking around suspiciously, Zuko got to his feet. Before he could do anything else he startled in place.

"_What the-!?_" And he pulled his hands right under his nose as if seeing them closer would change their appearance. His nails had somehow grown an entire inch in the time he'd been under, honed into razor sharp claws.

It could mean only one thing.

As though seized by the center of his chest, Zuko gave an involuntary buck. The world went under the same mask of red from his dreams. He could feel the kuwanji, hear its growls, but this time it was reverberating through his skull, coiled in his gut like a snake and shooting off through his nerves. It had merged with the teen's body and had been in the process of conditioning it to its liking when Zuko had woken up.

"_Get out!_" he yelled at it but for his reprimand the entity within went off, flailing his limbs awkwardly, trying to assert control and as Zuko fought it he could've been a string puppet under an inexperienced set of hands.

He went toppling back into the water.

This wasn't a battle he could fight with force or reason. He couldn't very well send a blast of flame down his throat to fry the unwanted intruder nor try to talk it out with the demon who wanted an upgrade in the way of opposable thumbs and extra added firepower from a bender.

Zuko needed his willpower and his strength of mind and, as unlucky as he was, that was something of which he had plenty.

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"Yeah the girly's face were sweet and round, eyes so green as a froggy's backside," sang a burly man with a thick swamp accent, strumming a tune on a banjo. "Knew she'd be mine and oh so fine when she drunk me done silly on moonshine."

From the other three canoes the rest of the party joined in the chorus. "Oh I remember when my girl were a tiny thing, no bigger than a runty saplin'. Now she's grown up wider than tall, stretchin' from one side o' the sky to the other."

The lone girl sat off to a side, head low in her hands in misery on what had to be at least the ninth verse of the song she found oh so irritating. The way she glanced to the water below might've been in consideration over whether to drown herself in it or not. Although she was garbed in the same leafy clothing as the men the structure of her face and that the sun was only beginning to tan her pale skin told that she was not a local.

"Hey thar', Sunny Spring," said the youngest tribesman, about sixteen, plopping down beside her, "if you's knows any songs we could sing 'em for ya if you's feeling homesick. Can't we, cousins?"

The others all shouted in joyous agreement.

Face long, Mai tried to put her distance between herself and the other teen clothed only in a diaper-like loincloth. "How about _silence_?"

"Ah shoot! That ain't no fun!" And the teen Gumni spat a nugget off into the water. "Ya gots to have some sort of singin' or dancin' back where ya come from, Mai. Why even the crickets and the birdies is singin' out thar' yonder."

"Put's a _fire_ in yo' belly! _Fire_ in yo' dainty lil' feet!"

"She got purdy lil' feet, ain't she?" said one, dangling his jaw open with several missing teeth. "Hair glossy as one o' them beetle bugs."

"I was under the impression that we were on a hunting trip," said Mai with much irony. The only reason she'd even come with was to avoid the traditional roles of the tribal women that involved cooking and cleaning. She wanted to do something useful that didn't put her skills to waste but was sorely starting to regret her decision.

"We's still huntin'. Don't mean it have to be borin'."

"Four _hours_ and we have a grand total of _three_ small catches."

"Journey's what it's about, lil' girl," said one of the older men with an easy look in his eye, "fun times, workin' on ya altos, ya timin' in the songs. Meat's a treat; won't all starve if we goes home with empty hands."

"Don't see no sign of any critters anyway," one pointed out, though they may've scared away any potential game. "Hey there, Ms. Mai, you wanna start up a new song? How 'bout the one with the bog beast what had a thorn stuck in its-?"

Before the man could finish that sentence Mai's signature shuriken appeared in her hands. The man instantly shut his trap. She didn't however put them away when her point was made but looked to a particular spot in the woods to their left. "Throughout your prattling I heard something in that direction, a deer or something. I'll be right back."

The weight sensitive boat dipped when she stepped onto the roots of a tree. Before she could go further than a step a second set of feet joined her. Without even flicking her head that way, Mai told Gumni to go back.

"Huntin' rule number one, Mai: never go out alone."

"I don't need a chaperone," she said as she walked, plenty used to being treated like a helpless girl. "As soon as I catch that deer those flimsy boats of yours won't be able to hold any more meat _meaning_ there will no longer be any point to this outing…as if it had a strong one to begin with."

"Not to offend," said Gumni, innocently overlooking the intended insult, "but not even our toughest warriors would ever go out alone. Ain't you been listenin' to the songs at all? 'Bout all the nasty beasties 'n spirits 'n the bog tha' pulls ya down like that swift-sand?"

"_Quick_-sand," Mai corrected and she'd not bothered to correct the rest of their grammar for fear of losing her voice from overuse. "So that _wasn't_ a bunch of bored old geezers blowing out hot air?"

Overhanging vines to her side that would've only brushed her shoulders she hacked down, getting out her frustration.

"Well…_some_," Gumni admitted, scratching at his long, messy hair. "_Most_ of it's real though. For all tha' pride of yours – not like it's a bad thing – ya still ain't a local. Ya don't know all thar' is to know in this here swamp and I'd be mighty sore if ya were to get hurt, Ms. Mai."

This time Mai said nothing and she signaled him to do the same. They were hunting after all and for all of Gumni's backwater upbringings nothing she'd said thus far had worn down his endless supply of chivalry and sweetness. He wasn't leaving her side.

Her attention was focused only ahead. "If you fall behind I'm _leaving_ you behind."

"That's _my_ line, lil' girl!" And no sooner than Gumni had said so his grimy, bare feet were off, roughened to the textures of the inconsistent ground, moving with the dexterity of a pair of hog-monkey's feet. Only with his speedy feet did he avoid a cuff over the head for his lip.

Not to be outdone, Mai too sped up, skipping between the more stable parts of ground like the trained fighter she was.

As fast as they moved, next to no sound was heard from their light steps. They both came to a stop within seconds of the other at picking up the sound Mai had heard.

"Right beyond this brush here, Mai," Gumni whispered, readying his spear.

"No kidding."

"Wanna celebrate ya first kill with me tonight? Got me some _special_ moonshine for a _special_ girl."

"No," she put with absolute bluntness.

"How 'bout if I wear some pants?"

"No."

"But-"

"Get ready," she ordered and she wouldn't even have had to say the words to Ty Lee. A simple nod would've been more than enough. "On three,"

"All right then," he sighed, shot down. "Three,"

"Two," counted Mai after but just before they'd have hit one the hunters suddenly turned into the hunted, forced to leap to either side to avoid a wild torrent of flame from baking them on the spot. Their attacker leapt in a beat behind the fire and, seeing Gumni first, brought in a second wave.

"_Zuko?_" And Mai's eyes were wide in surprise, not expecting him at all.

Her voice didn't carry over the fierce blasts he fired over and over at the other boy but Gumni himself was no novice and gathered precipitation abundant in every inch surrounding to shield it off.

Mai quickly went from surprise to irritation. How could Zuko overlook her so entirely, attack that swamp boy when he'd done nothing to provoke him? She yelled out those very things, demanding his attention, when he whipped round quite suddenly.

Mai had a second and much more pronounced reaction on taking him in. His eyes – pupils, irises, whites – all of them were gone, glazed over by a film of crimson red and the same red coursed through his hair in streaks. Everywhere his face was stressed in nameless fury. He'd taken on a round-shouldered, slightly crouched stance and his lengthened nails tensed to attack.

"What on earth!? What's the matter with you!?"

"One of them spirits got him!" said Gumni, seizing the opportunity to get back to his feet. "He's possessed!"

"Zuko!" Mai tried again, standing her ground as he neared her. "Zuko, it's me, you idiot! Snap out of it!"

His lips reared back in a vicious snarl, sounding not at all human, not seeming to recognize her voice.

"Maybe ya shouldn't be insultin' him right now!"

It changed Mai's tactics a little, not having Azula and Ty Lee as part of her team, for the first time fighting a bender of her own nation but it was the same kind of challenge she'd wanted when she'd left Omashu…regretfully though the challenge had come in the form of her ex.

"Fight it! You're no weakling!" It wouldn't be said that she hadn't given him a chance.

Still he drew forward.

"Don't force my hand in this, Zuko!"

Zuko sent a wave of flames flying at waist height, growling with the voice of kuwanji in place of his own, and Mai had no choice but to duck. Under the cover of the departing flames, she drew back up running to a side and keeping her distance as she threw her daggers. She wasn't trying to hit him but, in the craze he was under, knew that to hold back could prove fatal.

Her shuriken weren't as able as Aang's staff in wind-milling off attacks but she managed the smaller flames, dodging the larger ones. Improvising, Mai shot off a dagger that would've hit Zuko dead center in the chest but straight after she threw a second dagger to hit the first and change its angle.

Zuko took a bad step when his shoe was pinned to the ground and his fire blast shot off in an entirely different direction than intended.

In that the kuwanji wasn't used to handling a human's body, looking down at the shoe as though it were an irremovable hoof, it gave Mai the few seconds needed to dart in from behind, retrieve her weapon and kick out the sensitive backs of his knees. She'd thought she'd won when he'd begun to buckle under the weight but before he did he shot back two bursts of flame over his back. Growing up so many years with Ty Lee paid off and Mai tucked and rolled over backwards in instinct. She was too slow to recover though and before she could reach for a dagger Zuko was rushing her, grabbing her by her collar and pinning her up to a tree.

He kept her there, pressing his palm forcibly to her collarbone, rearing back his other hand to strike.

"Zuko…" Mai breathed, the twisted reds of his eyes all that she could see.

In his reared back hand a ball of fire ignited.

"_Zuko_…" She was truly afraid now, "_don't_…"

He'd been about to bring that hand forward in full force but in that movement he jolted back in an abrupt hesitation. He seemed then not so dead set on destruction but no less under the demon's influence because of it. Zuko's hand quivered, pulled in two different directions; his head jerked erratically, commands from two separate minds battling it out internally to take charge.

Zuko growled and roared under the intense stress of it all and somewhere in that savageness Mai heard the raspy tone of Zuko's real voice.

"Don't lose!" she shouted at him, not about to let him give up. "Don't you dare!"

Quaking in his every movement, Zuko managed under great exertion to draw back from her a few inches. Once he did there came a whistle from up above. Zuko and Mai looked up out of instinct.

Gumni hung upside down from one of the tree's branches. He gave a friendly wave before upending a vial.

The liquid inside splashed directly onto Zuko's face. From the smell, Mai thought it an ill-mixed perfume but Zuko had a far more severe reaction, clawing at the smell wildly, trying to shake it off.

It was too much to take. Zuko collapsed.

Mai stared and when Gumni jumped to the ground she inquired about the vial's content.

"It's a strong blend of perfume," he confirmed. "Ya see, when folk get bewitched like this it's like a clump of mud 'n a clump of slime mashing together. Each side has its advantages 'n disadvantages 'n they all get thrown into the mix. I reckoned he mighta been fixed up with a touchy sniffer."

"Is he going to be…?"

"Fine, fine," Gumni waved off, easing her unease. "He'll come 'round soon enough." Plenty used to hauling large game, Gumni lugged the again unconscious Zuko onto his back with a single heave. "Gettin' all sorts of odd outsiders 'round here lately, ain't we?"

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Hee hee, anyone remember the movie Hook with Zuko's voice actor Danté Basco playing Ruffio? Now Zuko has those same red stripes in his hair in the storyline! Crazy! 


	8. Chapter 8

This one took a while to write but I'm finally finished. Don't worry everyone I haven't forgotten about Keiko. Thank you very much for reviewing – it makes me so happy! ;) Enjoy!

Arual-san

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An hour passed by like a year in the mind of a toddler and soon Keiko was bored and, as any family that had raised benders knew, such a thing could prove dangerous.

At first she just fiddled with her fingers in her lap but very soon she was restless, plunking down onto her back and stretching her legs in the cramped space of the tree hole. Keiko jut out her limbs every which way and Momo squeaked and contorted into odd positions to avoid impact. Keiko jogged an invisible race upside down, whined and moaned and put every small thing available in the tree in her mouth to chew on. Surely the big, tough, invincible idol she saw when she looked to her newly discovered half-brother was more than enough to beat that mean red head that had been chasing them.

The whole innards of the tree became marked by her teeth and drool and still Zuko didn't return.

If he was playing another of his strange games then Keiko soon concluded that it wasn't very fun.

As it was the space was much too small for both a small child and a lemur to fit comfortably in but once three hours passed it became unbearable. Keiko entertained herself by pulling on Momo's oversized ears and his furry arms to see how wide his concealed wings would spread.

In only minutes of the rough treatment Momo had had enough and was off past the crude door Zuko had fashioned. Keiko however wasn't finished playing and grabbed onto his legs as he took off.

As Keiko giggled in delight and kicked her little legs round she was unmindful of Momo's panicked and ultimately futile attempts to keep aloft with her added weight. They lost altitude quickly and came up to a length of tree roots where Keiko touched down to a jogging stop. If Momo thought he could seize that chance to escape he was mistaken when Keiko grabbed him into a suffocating hug for the much needed fun.

In Momo's struggling to duck out from under her, that Keiko was not yet a master at walking with her short, chubby legs, the little girl lost her balance on the roots and went tumbling back into the mucky water the two had thought they had just cleared.

"_Eeeee!_"

Keiko surfaced with a great glob of mud where her face should've been and when she tried to say something instead of words a great mud bubble frothed from her mouth. She wiped it off with another giggle. She wiped at the rest of her face.

Harassed and dripping wet, Momo scurried back onto dry land and shook himself dry.

After transferring most of the mud onto her sleeves instead, Keiko was nearly as clean as she was going to get, mimicking through the motions her mother went through whenever Keiko had wandered into mud puddles after heavy rains.

When she looked down to her reflection Keiko saw that the only mud that remained was in a large diamond-like shape over her left eye. Seeing that made Keiko's lips droop low and she looked up as though expecting to see the real thing. Zuko of course wasn't there and her gloppy, mud-covered face was a poor imitation to say the least. She wiped it off and her little face was pink and soft once again.

Keiko pulled herself onto dry land beside Momo, looking at him curiously when he'd started to lick at his wet fur and wondering why he was getting himself wetter. She looked back over the swamp but only saw a swarm of insects, a couple birds and a few harmless spirits.

"Zuzu?" she called out, trying to raise her voice higher than the noise of the animals.

The swamp noises droned on and on.

She was without an answer.

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The low-cut canoes parted through the water that was as green stained glass and made the only ripples in its surface for several yards. As the swamp folk started up a new song about warty frogs or something equally disgusting Mai tried to drown out the never-ending annoyance she felt by focusing instead on how many and what kinds of those slimy creatures were contributing to the background "music".

It wasn't something she enjoyed but it was slightly more bearable.

While Mai's ears were focused where they were the rest of her was focused on Zuko who lay next to her on the bottom of the canoe, sleeping and propped up against one of the seats. The perfume Gumni had been collecting for his sister's birthday seemed to be the break Zuko needed; when Mai sat next to him she saw that his forehead was coated in sweat.

"You're more trouble than you're worth," Mai sighed but she ran a cloth through the water and wiped his head all the same. It didn't after all take much effort to do so.

Mai had believed what she'd said before in that Zuko wasn't weak and the evidence there was the proof she needed to see that he had been fighting with much force the unseen demon for hours before she'd discovered him. She'd also happened to discover Zuko at a time when his side was waning.

Zuko tossed his head and groaned slightly, the wildness of his actions tamed to next to nothing while he was asleep and he and the demon had all the space of his subconscious to avoid one another. He wouldn't be nearly so peaceful when he woke up again.

"Kei…Keiko, I'm coming! _Don't_…" he trailed off and started anew, "Stop slacking off, Aang! Some Avatar _you_ are!"

"_Much_ more trouble," Mai decided as she moved the cloth from his nose back onto his forehead.

Despite the danger, Mai didn't leave Zuko's side…but she hadn't protested either when the swamp folk had bound him up in rope for their own safety. She wasn't so overconfident in her abilities to not acknowledge how close she had come to losing the fight with the kuwanji controlling Zuko, to having to require the backup of Gumni's that she had been so quick to discard. The swamp was like a different world, so much more than switching from the advanced society of the Fire Nation in which she'd been raised to the city of Omashu and all over the rest of the Earth Kingdom in her princess's pursuit of the Avatar. Adapting to the swamp wouldn't happen in a day nor had it yet happened in the three days Mai had been there nor did she intend to make adaptation a necessary thing.

Mai was no swamp dweller. She was getting out of there as soon as possible.

A few things stood in the way of that desire though: first, there were few places to hide from the Fire Nation _inside_ the nation itself, second, they needed transportation and third was…

"_Mai!_" a voice shouted, ecstatic.

The friend who was her polar opposite waved madly and jumped in place like she was flagging down a rescue ship.

For reasons Mai couldn't fathom, Ty Lee actually liked the slime pit they wound up in. She gave a flick of her hand in acknowledgment.

Ty Lee bounded up to the boat before it had even docked – jumping up from the circle of tribal women the instant she saw the small fleet – and she helped tug it in. Like Mai, the perkier girl had also discarded her prison attire to stitch up a blouse and skirt made of leaves. She even went so far as to dye them pink with berries as a stand-in for her beloved circus uniform. Mai's leaf outfit was functional while Ty Lee's was fashionable but even with the same materials to work with both their personalities of sun or gloom reflected through all in how they were cut.

"_Oooo_, they're _singing_ again!" Ty Lee beamed on hearing a new song from the hunters. She received several smiles. "You guys are great! So creative! Can you teach me the lyrics?"

Mai's eyes slit so narrow she could barely see through.

"Hey, Zuko's here too!" she continued, happy for the familiar face, popping her front into the boat. "What the heck did you do to your hair? And why are you tied up? Are you two playing some weird dating game and Mai won or something? _Anyway_, the girls and I had oodles of fun back in camp." She turned back to them. "Right, girls?"

A round of affirmative cheers rose from the group of women.

Ty Lee gave them a wave and she got back to her friends as the boats were pulled onto the village shore. "We repaired some loose reeds on a few of the huts, shared stories around the campfire and _sang!_ I can't _remember_ the last time I took part in any sort of music! It_ – it was so exhilarating!_ Did you have a good time hunting, Mai?"

"_Fantastic_," Mai replied in scorn but in her excitement Ty Lee overlooked her friend's usual lack of enthusiasm to get back to Zuko, who she'd not seen in many long days.

She pulled from her sleeve a necklace knotted from vines, too loose in some places, too tight in others.

"I made it!" Ty Lee declared and the blisters on her fingers were proof. "You don't know how many times it snapped and I had to start over but here it is! Isn't it pretty, Zuko?"

Throughout Ty Lee's rambling Zuko had begun to shift in his position. On the ride there Mai's voice was low and the songs from the swamp folk had a certain flow to them that was similar to the natural flow of the currents below.

Ty Lee on the other hand could've been banging drumsticks inside Zuko's eardrums, now hypersensitive like most of his senses while playing host to the demon.

When she leaned in nearer to him it was enough to override the perfume's effect too early.

"_Well?_ Isn't it pretty?"

The kuwanji spirit within Zuko snapped to life and made a rabid bite at her outstretched fingers.

Pulling away in the nick of time, Ty Lee gave a high-pitched shriek of alarm like a cat that'd had its tail trod on. "I didn't think it was _that_ bad! Don't be such a-!" But Ty Lee figured it out on her own at Zuko's wild thrashing in his restraints and the reds of his eyes. "What's going on?"

"Just run and prepare the village medium please," said Mai but before they could separate a blast of flame did it for them.

The hunters stuffed a wad of cloth into Zuko's mouth to prevent any more breathes of fire and it took three of their strongest to restrain and bring him into the village. Still they were slowed and many small fires from the little he could move had to be put out. Mothers rushed their little ones inside. The kuwanji seemed positively furious that it had been detained and was set on causing as much destruction as possible. It nearly struggled free from the men's clutches but even then it would've had no where to go in being bound so tightly.

The village wasn't large and soon they reached the medium's hut, slightly removed from its neighbors for the sake of privacy.

From its curtain doors Ty Lee slid out with the nervous stance similar of a thief though she had stolen nothing. She kept her lip buttoned and her hands clutched low at her front as the hunters brought Zuko in.

She looked after with betraying curiosity but then looked back to Mai as though asking permission.

"Don't give me that," Mai said flatly, pushing her in and following after. "He's your friend too."

If the slime and the muck and the creepy crawlers were enough to make Mai almost long for her former prison cell her first step into the medium's hut made that loathing amplify thrice over when dangling down from the ceiling were all manners of dried chicken feet, twisted roots and animal bones rearranged into deranged-looking wind chimes. The jars on the shelves were worse and neither girl could even bear to look long enough to identify what horrible things were bottled up inside.

"Out! Out! All of you out now! I must be left alone to examine the patient!"

The girls looked down and what they saw more closely resembled a large species of owl rather than any human they'd come across. The medium was hunched over with age, the cloak that lay over her shoulders was far too large for her withered frame and when she moved the sleeves swished like wings. Even her bare feet seemed to arch back in claws.

The demands of her croaky little voice however belied her age and sent the men out in a hurry.

"Out now!" the medium gestured to the girls, shooing at them. "You too!"

Mai looked not at the medium but her focus shifted to where Zuko lay writhing on the dirt ground, desperate to rid the demon from his skin, so dead focused on that one thing that he held no awareness in any of his other senses.

Mai sat down right where she was. She folded her arms.

"If it's not absolutely necessary for us to leave," Ty Lee said for the sake of politeness, sitting down too, "we'd like to stay."

"Heh!" the old medium spat out. "You stay then you work! Up off that floor!" She jabbed her fingers in all manners of directions. "Get me _that_ vase, _that_ jar and its brother three spots over! A handful of that! That, that and that!"

If the medium had been hoping for a chance to get rid of them by a set of rapid instructions she was disappointed when each of the requested items just as rapidly were lined up in a row at her feet. By her orders Mai and Ty Lee rushed to set down and light blood-red candles in a circle around Zuko, they stirred and measured out amounts into bowls.

Together they poured out an intricate pattern of sand from a page in a book, ending at the same point at each other's feet, synchronized even in matters less intense than combat.

"Now sit and be quiet!"

The medium swept the girls back as she stepped into the circle. One of the noxious substances mixed appeared to be a sweet treat to the old woman, for she gulped it down with gusto.

Mai shoved back down her throat the scowl she wished to utter and sat.

"Umm…" Ty Lee tried, twitting her fingers, "it's not like this is the _worst_ temper tantrum Zuko's ever had."

Mai was not amused. She only stared to where the old medium drew up Zuko's head to her in a clawed vice-grip, examined his eyes and any other traces of irregularity. She poked and prodded him all with the care of sticking in needles into a pincushion.

"A _rare_ specimen this is," the medium announced, "…for the area anyway." Rather than any sort of concern for the boy, she seemed all too eager to extract the shining gem that lay within to add to her collection and for that Mai didn't trust her enough to leave.

Mai was in no mood to wait. "Just get it out of him."

The old medium made a 'hmmph'ing noise and she stretched her hands forward in preparation, cracking several joints. Her payment for the exorcism was the demon itself and the specially symboled vial at her hip was enough to trap the kuwanji up tight and prevent it from going from Zuko right into any of them instead.

Unable to follow when the woman started to chant an ancient language lost to the present world, Mai and Ty Lee watched with silent angst

The medium worked and as she continued her incantation the sands sparked with violet flame but seemed not to burn either her or Zuko. She continued on as Zuko writhed and thrashed on the ground with his most energy yet but after a time the bucks seemed not his own. It was like he was having a seizure.

Ty Lee laid a hand over her friend's.

Finally something happened. Zuko's spine arched back and stayed in that awkward and uncomfortable position as a strange red mist seemed to flow out from his eyes. As he fought beneath the gag again muffled voices shifted between Zuko's and the kuwanji's.

At first the girls were hopeful…but his voice was in evident pain. The kuwanji didn't want to give up its host, sunk its claws more deeply into him against the pull that threatened to expel it.

Mai's every muscle tightened when Zuko's head bucked back and hit the ground hard but she couldn't stay silent when tears started to gather in the corners of the eyes that weren't his. "_Stop it!_ You're _hurting_ him!"

"I am _saving_ him," the medium corrected, never looking up from her work. The vial was nearly full and the kuwanji was clawing out its last spirited attempts to win a losing battle, ripping madly against the restraints.

Seconds passed and the vial filled to the top.

Zuko wilted to the ground, his head sagging to a side. The red stripes in his hair began to fade back to black and his overlong nails receded but with the demon gone all the life and passion he was struggled with before was gone. He was motionless.

No longer could Mai force herself to stand by. She ran into the circle, knocking over a number of candles as she did.

"_Zuko!_"

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Ooo, cliffhanger! Sorry guys but that's all you get until the next chapter. Please R&R!


	9. Chapter 9

Thanks everyone for the R&R. Enjoy!

Arual-san

"Zuko!"

She had no care for anything the old woman said in return and the words of her complaints blurred. Mai swept down beside Zuko and lifted his head up off the ground, where it lolled back on its hinge.

Mai removed the gag just as fast. Zuko was breathing, his chest was rising but it wasn't enough for her, not after what she had seen.

"Zuko," Mai prodded, shaking him and leaning in close, "Zuko, wake up."

He tossed a little in her grip as though trying to figure out where the stressor was coming from. He moaned and he resisted but Mai wouldn't leave him be. If anything had gone wrong, if that crackpot old woman had damaged him in any way…

Mai growled that thought away and kept at it. Never had he been this hard to rouse before and the fact of that unnerved her more than she was willing to admit.

"Come on, Zuko, you can't _leave_ me here with these people," Mai persisted and her next words she spoke lowly, only for him, "I chose _you_ over Azula. I'd do it again."

Zuko's forehead crinkled. At long last his eyelids pried open and Mai sighed in relief that the pupils underneath were the shade of gold with which she was so familiar. His sight was a little glazed but it was only for her…she had after all drawn close enough for their noses to almost touch.

"…Mai?"

For a few moments the two just stared. It hadn't been even a week since they'd seen each other last at the Boiling Rock but so much had transpired since then, so many drastic changes that it could've been several months.

It was Mai that broke eye contact first. She pulled her head away and without warning dropped him there on the spot.

"_Owww!_" Zuko yelped, more out of shock than pain, only being an inch or two off the ground.

It didn't seem to be an accident since Mai got to her feet just as quickly and marched to the exit.

"Hey, wait!" he called after, rolling onto his side with the little he could move. "Mai! Don't do this, Mai!" But she was off past the curtains without pausing or turning back. The only way to pursue her like he wanted would be to push himself along the ground with his feet and that his dignity would not permit.

The thought of pursuit brought him to another matter.

"Why am I tied up!?"

Zuko struggled with the binds but they were tied expertly and offered no leeway he could slip out from. Before he could do anything else Ty Lee was bowling into him, locking him into a fierce hug.

"Geez, that was so scary! I think my heart jumped into my throat! Are you okay?"

"I – _ack_ – _fine!_" he choked out, trying but failing to duck out from under her.

"It's so great to see you again, Zuko!" Ty Lee beamed, releasing him, going from worried to thrilled in the blink of an eye. "I really didn't want to fight you back in that prison so I'm glad that Kyoshi girl was there! You know it never sat right with me to just leave you behind on that gondola, right? If it had just been me I'd have _never_-!"

"_Fine_, it's fine!" As sweet as Ty Lee was she could've gone on longer in apology so Zuko cut it off right there. He took a breather. "So that no good demon is history?"

Ty Lee gave a sharp nod.

"_Good_," he growled. He looked from her back to the curtains.

"Mai's still mad at you," said Ty Lee unnecessarily, not bothering to sober her sunny disposition. "You know, with her and me being labeled traitors to our nation because of you, forced on the run without anywhere to go, not knowing if we'll ever see our families again. _And_ you guys are still broken up. _And_ you didn't even have the guts to say so to her face."

"_Thanks_," Zuko scowled with as much sarcasm as he could squeeze into a single word.

"Sure!"

"Aren't you and Mai supposed to be in prison? I don't think Azula would've been too happy when Mai backed me and the rebels up."

"Unhappy is quite an understatement," Ty Lee replied sheepishly, smiling a nervous smile just thinking about it. "I didn't want to choose between Azula and Mai but they gave me no other choice. I guess we found out that day just how little we mean to Azula in the end."

Zuko grunted like he didn't want to think about it but he was touched that his sister's closest friends and allies had chosen him over her with very little hesitation.

"We _did_ get sent to prison yes but I believe that Azula wasn't quite herself after the double betrayal. She ordered us out of her sight and I think just as quickly she put us out of her mind since when we arrived the warden wasn't given stats, special instructions or anything else on us." Ty Lee's smile turned wickedly sweet. "We were just regular prisoners."

"_Big_ mistake." Zuko only wished he could've been there to see it blow up in the face of the warden. "What next?"

"We were only there a day and a half." Ty Lee was positively beaming at that, as if it were a personal best. "Mai and I _are_ nobility after all; we just adjusted what _nation_ we were from. I said we were Earth Kingdom sisters brought in by a Fire Nation town that had been struggling to meet supply demands and they were holding out for a ransom."

"You _didn't_…"

The girl flashed a grin that took up half her face; giggles hissed between the cracks of her teeth. "You don't know how very _lonely_ those poor guards were, _so_ many miles without a girl in sight. They were putty in my hands."

Even _envisioning_ Mai flirting as shamelessly as Ty Lee was something his brain couldn't process.

Knowing him like she did Ty Lee didn't have to ask to know the question he was thinking. "We probably could've gotten out _sooner_ if Mai had helped out but I worked out a different "_traumatized_" angle on her. We needed to nab a firebender to get us out but we escaped in no time!"

"So you ended up here how?"

"We didn't have a map or anything but I could…I don't know…_feel_ something calling me this way. Mai and I argued over it; she said it was a stupid reason to put faith in something and that the path would leave us in plain sight to anyone flying overhead but after so many hours she lost interest and let me do what I wanted. So how'd _you_ get here? Get in an argument with that bender girl and she pushed you off the bison?"

"_No_, a tornado hit our balloon and we got separated."

"Oh," Ty Lee shrugged cheerily. "That was my _next_ guess." From there she sat back on her knees and smiled and when no action seemed to be coming after Zuko felt he needed to state the obvious.

"Can you uh…untie me?"

"Oh right!" She snapped right to it. "Sorry I was just thinking about…" – she caught herself in a sigh – "those guys at prison weren't very cute and they had all this icky soot on their faces. Heh, heh, I actually kept pasting that Water Tribe cutie's face over theirs just to make my act convincing."

As soon as she'd said that Zuko gave a rip against the restraints to get out all that much quicker. Getting sucked into girl-talk crushes about _Sokka_ made him want to march back into the swamp right that second and beg another demon to possess him.

Swooning, Ty Lee plucked at the ropes like a lute player at her strings. "Is he single?"

Despite how he struggled Zuko still hadn't been able to get an arm free and so he was forced to answer. He braced himself. "Uhh…no."

He'd barely murmured the last words in hopes she wouldn't catch it but a sudden sharp pull signaled she'd heard it just fine.

"_What!?_ Doesn't he _like_ me!? I always tried not to beat him up _too_ bad!"

"Do you even know his _name_?"

"Sure, I do, it's Sokka. I've heard that gang toss it around a few times. So _exotic_." But she didn't let herself get caught off in her daydreams for long. "That's just typical – _I _become available just when _he_ goes off the market. So who's he seeing then?"

"Suki."

"Who's _she_?"

He didn't want to answer but staying silent would get him no closer to freedom. "The head of the Kyoshi Warriors."

"_Her!?_" Ty Lee exploded, indignant, mis-pulling a rope and making Zuko cringe when it burned across his ribs._ "_Why _her!?_ The three of us were outnumbered and we still beat her weak little team without even breaking a sweat!" She huffed and pulled away with a pout. "And I'm _prettier_ too."

Zuko's gaze rolled longingly to the exit and the curtains danced in the wind out of his reach as if taunting him.

He was given a harsh tug.

"_Aren't_ I prettier?"

"Uhh…" He wasn't so dense not to recognize a pretty face when he saw it but he hadn't really looked at either one of them in that sense: Suki was first an enemy, then off limits as Sokka's girlfriend; Ty Lee was his childhood friend and they were never compatible enough to ever be anything more.

Zuko had only been in thought about it for a few seconds but that few seconds was far too long for Ty Lee's vanity and he didn't need to look back to _feel_ her eyes burning into his neck. He was at the mercy of her knowledge of pressure points. She could make him hurt bad.

There was only one correct answer.

"Yes!" he stammered out. "_You're_ prettier! _Way_ prettier!"

Satisfied in that simple if forced reassurance, any and all of Ty Lee's righteous feminine anger melted away and she was all sunshine and smiles again. "Aww, thanks Zuko. You're sweet when you want to be."

His wrist was almost free and he tugged at it desperately.

"You and Sokka are friends now right?" persisted Ty Lee and she either overlooked or was completely unaware of just how much he struggled. "Maybe those two will break up. Maybe you could put in a good word for me and-" But at that very second Zuko had gotten free and as hard as it was to do he pushed himself with the one hand, hightailing it for the exit, shedding the rest of the ropes as he ran.

"Get _back_ here!" the girl shouted after him, shaking her fist. "We're having quality time together!"

As soon as Zuko tasted freedom he whipped his head left and right, analyzing, searching for a place to hide and secure that freedom. The village was only a few yards away but with Ty Lee's friendly nature he doubted that any one of its inhabitants would continue to hide him after being inquired by her. His less than adept people skills weren't helping in the here and now so he picked a direction and ran with it.

"Zuko!"

He dove into the nearest bush.

"Come on, I need love too! Talk to me!"

However Zuko wasn't fully intimidated by her idol threats, knowing that she was a close-range fighter and as long as he could keep her in sight and keep his distance he'd be safe.

That safety he wasn't so certain of when he bumped into someone else's elbow.

He made a tiny sound of surprise but quickly stifled it, praying that Ty Lee didn't overhear.

Zuko didn't start with formalities or anything of the sort. He made a shushing gesture to the other teen.

Thinking it over, Gumni nodded. "Sure thing, bro."

The minutes ticked by twice as slow as Ty Lee looked through the borderlines of the swamp, calling out for him, parting through bushes just like Zuko's hiding place. She eventually gave up and with a sigh returned to the village.

Zuko allowed himself to breathe again.

"Shoot, man," Gumni chuckled, slapping the other boy on the back, "ya not been here a day 'n already both ya girls are madder than wet opossum-hens!"

"Yeah, yeah," Zuko didn't want to get into the details with some random stranger. Now that he wasn't fighting for the right to work his own body or ducking for cover he wasted no time in sitting back in a moment to relax…but just a moment. Something churned in his stomach, something nasty. He turned back to Gumni. "Why are you in this bush anyway? Having your own girl problems?"

"Naw, just checkin' on this here red-throat swallow's nest." He lifted a branch and there was a little nest concealed beneath. "Not been seeing much o' that bird lately so reckon I oughta look out for egg snatchers or swappers when I finds 'em."

"Oh…" His stomach rumbled and he clutched at it. "So that's a _nice_ animal then? It's _worth_ saving?"

"Not gettin' along with the local wildlife there?"

Zuko had been about it answer but he felt something uncomfortable in his throat and coughed it out. The next thing after he barely had time to cover his mouth for the sake of manners. Gumni's manners weren't quite so refined and he leaned in much too close with a scrutinizing eye.

"W-what?" The breach of an arm's length of personal space was too much and Zuko was forced to push him away for security but not before the other boy took a whiff of that poorly concealed burp.

"Smells like…" Gumni nodded it over in his head, considering, "smells like opossum-chicken and catfish-gator…maybe some swamp rat mixed in. Here I pinned ya as some uptight city boy. Looks like ya know how to rough it purdy good."

"But I…I haven't hunted in _hours_ and…"

"Had it all raw 'n bloody too," Gumni added in praise. "That'll put hair on ya chest!"

Realization hit him like a blow from one of Toph's flying boulders and his cheeks went green just as fast. He had only just been feeling hunger pangs before he and Keiko had run into the kuwanji, had been about to go hunting again before they were pursued. The kuwanji couldn't have wanted its new body to have been weakened in any way so it had to have taken action on its carnal instincts.

Gumni was in the way of the exit and Zuko didn't want to chance opening his mouth to tell him to move. He brushed him aside and went running for the nearest place to get the sick out.

Waiting it out through the less than pleasant noises in the underbrush, Gumni distracted himself by whistling along to the sounds of the birds overhead, taking a small part in their little mismatched orchestra. He couldn't leave an outsider for fear of losing that person to the dangers of the swamp and he was not at all in any hurry to get anywhere.

Zuko returned with a heavy sway to his walk like he was going to trip over himself any second. Nevertheless he trudged along step by step, tried to refuse the assistance Gumni offered but was too weary to win.

"We'll get you somewhere to sleep this off."

Zuko shook his head as firmly as he dared. _That_ argument he would not lose. "Not until I find Keiko."


	10. Chapter 10

The sun was beginning to fade from the sky that no one could see from below the thick canopy of trees. Though sheltered from the sky above darkness and cold still began to seep into the swamp below like any other land.

Soon it would be too dark to venture outside the boundaries of the village.

"A lock down," Zuko grumbled for lack of a better word as he sat hunched into himself, still fighting off the horrible stomachache caused by the raw meat he'd unwittingly ingested. His stomach wasn't tempered to such fare and it felt like a lump of clay being twisted, pulled and knotted by a potter.

If he hadn't known already that he'd emptied his stomach earlier he'd be much tempted to go throw up again.

Even with the arrogance of his youth Zuko wasn't so foolhardy to chance going out venturing in the swamp when he could barely make anything out more than a body's length away, not to mention all the unseen dangers, many of which he was unfamiliar with. The night would settle within the next two hours, the same pitch black that had been intimidating in nights past, the night that he would not permit Keiko to face alone.

For too long Zuko had listened to their voices from the window above for some time to gather the confidence to face them. "Too long" was technically only about nine minutes but it was too long all the same.

He couldn't put it off any longer.

Zuko pushed past the curtains of the hut and no sooner than he had he nearly bumped into a young girl carrying a basket full of nashi pears. Instead of being upset, she offered him one of her fruit and was on her way.

"Thanks," he said, pocketing it, despite that the last thing he wanted right then was food.

The girls sat on the floor of the two room, each weaving in and out on their own loom, earning their keep, and they didn't so much as acknowledge Zuko when he entered, when he sat down before them; he in fact had to clear his throat quite loudly to get them to look up from their work.

He cut to the chase. "I need to ask you two a favor."

"Oh _yeah?_" Ty Lee snapped back, still managing to sound sweet despite her irritation. "Maybe _I'll_ just go running away like _you_ have that pentapox plague this time. Sound good?"

"It's getting cold out," Mai pointed out dryly, glancing at her concealing sleeves, "best to send _him_ running a second time."

"Nice one, Mai." Ty Lee leaned over to look on her friend's work. "Your fingers are so slender and precise; you're picking this weaving stuff up so fast. That piece is coming along well."

"Thank you, Ty Lee."

"Orange isn't really your regular color though. Are you turning over a new leaf?"

"Not likely, no," Mai replied as she weaved another strand. "You spent all that time crafting me this necklace so I thought I'd return the favor."

"Aww," Ty Lee clapped her hands together and just as quickly wrapped them around Mai in a hug, "you really _do_ have a drop of sweetness under all that gloomy, gray blah. So what's it going to be? A rug? A blanket? I could really use a new-"

Tired of waiting, Zuko persisted, "I wouldn't ask this of you if it wasn't _really_ important. I don't need that much of your time, I just-"

"Ugh!" Ty Lee's sugary face curled in disgust like he was some overgrown bug. "Are you _still_ here? Go away! Go find that group you like so much better than us on your own!"

"It's not _like_ that!"

"Well whatever it's like," – Mai raised her head and dark eyes pierced into Zuko's gold – "you can go fix it on your own. It hasn't even been a week and I've had to rescue your sorry princeling hide twice."

"Yeah!" Ty Lee seconded. "Do you know how much we've sacrificed because of your wishy-washy little decisions lately? How about some appreciation here?"

"I _do_ appreciate it," Zuko insisted, believing it himself and wishing for them to do the same. "And I'm not choosing the Avatar over either of you. I couldn't ask you to betray our nation with me. You're my friends and I wanted to keep you out of it but here we all are."

"Yeah well I'm _busy_," declared Ty Lee, snobbishly raising her chin high and away, still miffed over Zuko's abandonment when she'd wanted to talk.

"That sock…or whatever it is just needs three more stitches! You're not busy!"

"Yes I am."

"With _what?_" Zuko challenged without fear, for what could anyone possibly do for recreation in a place as godforsaken as the one they had landed themselves in?

Her chin remained propped up as high as any noblewoman could boast but Ty Lee's reply was a few seconds behind as though she were contemplating it behind that poised face.

"I'm waxing my eyebrows tonight."

"That's not a reason!" he argued back, annoyed for all the time of his she was wasting.

"Well you wouldn't know the pain we girls go through for beauty," Ty Lee replied haughtily as if the poor excuse she'd come up with was perfectly reasonable. "I'm going to need several hours of recovery time, going to need to get this layer of slime that always seems to be coating my skin all cleaned up if I'm going to take down that Suki girl that stole my man!"

"I'm supervising," Mai replied blandly before Zuko could open his mouth to ask.

Despite the continuous negative feedback and that he still owed them a few times over, Zuko wasn't discouraged. If he was going to go back into that swamp at the worst hour that he could he needed backup that he knew and trusted, nevermind how much better the swamp dwellers knew the land.

"All right," Zuko resigned; he figured he owed them a rundown of things instead of going into something blindly. It's what he'd have wanted in their place. "In the past couple of days I've gotten sidetracked, split up from the main group and put training the Avatar on hold."

Mai rolled her eyes to the ceiling and kept them there. "The _epic_ tale unfolds…"

He overlooked her sarcasm. "I found my mom."

"The Fire Lady!?" That got the two of them on the edge of their seats, intensely interested now where before they had been anything but. It was one of the greatest unknown and unspoken of things they could recall.

Zuko nodded. "The Fire Lord," he continued, not even gracing his father with a parental title, "banished her several years ago for treason to the crown, for killing my grandfather to spare me. Only just recently…she was sentenced to be executed."

A bolt jumped through Ty Lee and she actually squeaked in alarm. Mai's reaction was far less pronounced; she kept her wits and urged Zuko on though she didn't speak a word.

"I got her out safely with the help of the two rebel girls Katara and Toph," he said without delay and with those words the two could breathe normally again. Both had been in good relations with Ursa. "Before we could get back to the others however something else happened."

"Oooo, I _like_ this epic tale," Ty Lee said, playing off Mai's earlier words.

"It turns out that I have another sister."

Ty Lee and Mai reacted again but not with the same intensity as Zuko's first bombshell. As much as the young prince thought he was alone he certainly seemed to have quite a few family members that he was bouncing in between: Uncle Iroh, the Fire Lord and Azula, his mother and second sister.

"As I'm sure you've noticed," Zuko picked up, "this sister Keiko isn't with me right now. She's not with the girls or my mom either. We were separated by that incident with the kuwanji and I need to find her _now_."

This time as soon as Zuko had finished Ty Lee was on her feet, needing no further convincing. Far from moving, Mai continued to sit hands on her knees with the unmovable posture of a flash-frozen statue.

Just as the two turned from her and had been about to brush past the curtains she stood.

Mai couldn't very well give Zuko the cold shoulder she'd been so meaning to give him if he wasn't around to receive it.

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Oh so tempting to hungry green eyes was the small mass of berries lying atop a thick branch pulled out from the earth like a stitch in a cloth. Throughout his stomach's growls Momo's simple mind processed that he'd gone through this situation before with lychee nuts.

He concluded that berries did not grow in clusters on dead tree branches.

Momo kept one eye on the prize while the other eye darted round every which way for any sign of danger. He crept up onto the branch and it dipped slightly with his small weight. He paused and then he continued, plenty hungry.

A few inches from the berries Momo paused more indefinitely. He sniffed and he batted the air above them, ready to jet at the first sign of a trap.

He reached a tiny brown hand out…and had his feet swept out from under him at a sudden sharp dip to the weight the branch held. The trap snapped into action, trapped one of those feet tight and up he ascended away from the luscious treats.

"Ooo," Keiko said as she scampered onto the branch, not knowing that she was the cause of his plight. She did however see the berries and wasn't quite as cautious as he in bounding after them.

Momo gave a shriek when Keiko gathered up all the berries in her hands and buried her face in them. He complained and he clawed as he dangled in the air but he came no closer to reaching her or the fruit that was rightfully his.

Keiko noticed and her little face rose, a dirty mess of mud and juice after only a few hours without supervision. Her jaw drew open in amusement when the lemur dangling above started zooming left and right, pulling at the rope to get free, and she wondered what he was doing up there.

Soon Momo was flying round and round, faster and faster, and Keiko still tried to follow the movement, twirling around in circles with him, her mud-caked dress fluttering with her. She could only hold out several seconds before she got dizzy and fell back into the swamp water. When she surfaced though, Keiko smiled up at Momo and opened her palm.

Five plump berries still remained.

With a little trouble with only one usable hand, Keiko scampered back onto the highest part of the branch, outstretched her hand as far as she could to try and share the only snack they'd had in hours. Momo grabbed at it every time the branch above bobbed down with his weight but he always came up short. Keiko even hopped to add more height but for nothing.

The berries were laid down in the same place they'd been before and Momo's overlarge ears drooped low. Those ears perked back up when he felt a sudden weight on the branch that held him captive.

Not long had Keiko been climbing up when the angle changed to sideways and then to upside down. Though the branch was still green and bendy it wasn't selected to be able to hold their combined weight but it held until Keiko could reach her furry companion.

Momo had been staring at her all the while as she climbed that he only just noticed that he had now dipped low enough to reach the berries. He stuffed them all into his mouth at once before anything else could take them away, chewed happily as Keiko chomped her gums holding few teeth over the rope that held Momo in attempts to saw through it.

More accurately she was much closer to drooling through it.

"Found the sprout!" called a husky voice and Keiko was plucked from the tree even as her jaws continued on in chewing motions. "Gots a lemoo here too! Reckon it'll cook up good over the campfire!"

Momo squeaked with much more anxiety than a simple matter of berries and as soon as the rope holding him was cut he zoomed straight into Keiko's chest, before so avoided, now the safest place he could be.

A bit taken back at first, Keiko gurgled in joy and pulled him close in a too-tight hug.

"Aww, ain't that cute?" said the heavy-set man holding her as the other three in his group gathered close. "It's her little cuddly thang. Ah well, I'd not ever do somethin' to make a babe cry."

For now Momo's quick thinking saved his skin. His grip didn't slacken though for the baby's short attention span might prefer for a moment the man's funny leaf hat and he could be in a pot just as quick.

The four swamp folk caught up to the rest of members in their team only a half hour into their search but before they could even begin to announce the news that train of thought was interrupted.

"Keiko!" All this time Zuko had been hunching over his complaining stomach. For the first time he straightened out.

"Zuzu!" Keiko called back, squirming in the man's arms so that he nearly dropped her. As tight as Momo had been clutching her before he zipped off (but stayed close) to avoid being squished when Keiko leapt into her brother's arms as soon as he was in range.

"She calls you Zuzu?" piped Ty Lee, both surprised and amused. "But you _hate_ that nickname. Does this mean those rough edges of yours are smoothing out? Can _I_ call you-?"

"No!"

"But you didn't let me finish!"

"So you found the little parasite," said Mai from the safe, slime-free area of a tree's roots. "Congratulations. Why exactly did you drag us along?"

"Because it's better with you and Ty Lee," Zuko answered simply and, although the whole of her expression said differently, that Mai didn't walk out on him a second time back to the boats showed that she wasn't completely unaffected.

Digging in her grubby fingernails, Keiko used the depressions in Zuko's front like footholds and climbed up, to which Zuko grunted in discomfort with every step. She reached the top and wrapped her arms around his neck, not holding enough of her own weight so that he was further strained, and she planted a big, sloppy kiss on his cheek.

Added to the usual toddler drool, everywhere Keiko touched was left with a gross residue of mud and berry juice.

Zuko heaved a deep sigh. "You're going to be the death of me, you know."


	11. Chapter 11

Man oh man, the weather's bad up here! Snowstorm canceled a party I was going to hit so lucky for you guys that I finished this chapter today! ;) Thank you's and Christmas cookies to everyone who reviewed and here's the continuation!

Not knowing the lyrics to the upbeat but vulgar song currently being sung by the swamp folk, Ty Lee cocked her head one way, her body another, getting into the rhythm that was so usual and interesting to her ears; little Keiko bounced along on her lap and had to keep vigilant so that she wouldn't fall off; Zuko arched himself backward over one of the boat seats, silently suffering through his griping stomachache and Mai had reverted back to her former disposition in the midst of the scene she had only just escaped from.

Momo on the other hand had crawled under the seats in hopes of being forgotten entirely, not trusting his life to a distracted Keiko or a sick Zuko and still plenty wary of the two girls.

"Bah, bah, bah, bah-bah," Ty Lee hummed in improv background music, "Tadpoles!"

"Bah, bah, boo!" Keiko echoed as she was bounced from one leg to another.

"Bleh," Mai muttered, much like their chanting but with an entirely different meaning.

"Same here," Zuko murmured back for that summed up in one small word all the torment his stomach was inflicting on the rest of him.

"Stuff it," and Mai didn't even flick her eyes his way. She continued to stare away from the boat at nothing at all, much more content to do nothing than interact in any way with him or the other passengers in the form of singing or dancing. Despite that he was of higher class than she in being a prince Zuko hadn't used that authority before and he certainly wasn't going to use it now when she was so steamed at him for fear of making it even worse between them…if such a thing were possible. The Mai he knew was always so neutral, so clear-headed that he was as cautious as could be when her blood was so clearly boiling beneath her skin throughout that little of that anger surfaced on her impassive face.

Zuko wasn't the articulate being his sister was. One wrong thing said could deteriorate their already feeble relations into her not communicating with him even in short, clipped sentences.

He decided to respect her wishes. He'd need to be in top form and rid of his sickness if he were to have a chance to begin reasoning with her again.

Zuko's stomach still felt like it was gnawing away at the rest of him from the inside so he found a distraction in the form of the most boring thing he could think of to induce sleep: the properties of every known variety of tea.

"Silver Needle tea," he droned out listlessly, knowing every detail but not by choice. "Only harvested two days a year; subtle taste and pale infusion with white downy buds…"

A break came in between the songs for the men, particularly the basses that underwent the most strain, to rest their voices. Only a few scarce moments did Zuko and Mai have of peace before Ty Lee found something new to occupy herself with.

"What's under this mud-ball huh?" cooed Ty Lee, cocking her head left and right and moving it in to inspect her muddy little body. She swept the little girl up so fast that Keiko gasped before she was just as quickly dunked into the barrel of water meant to hold caught fish. Several dunks after the water absorbed much of the excess dirt but not the stuff that had become ingrained into her skin and hair.

"Rabbit-monkey Picked Oolong," mumbled Zuko, more and more painfully bored with every word. "Youngest leaves from the tops of the trees picked by trained rabbit-monkeys. Evenly-sized leaves and capable of multiple infusions…"

Ty Lee made an overdone gasp when Keiko became as clean as she was going to get in one wash. "Oh wow, there's a _baby_ under there!" she exclaimed with all the astonishment as if a toad had turned into a princess.

Keiko giggled and every movement she made flicked droplets from her sopping dress on the other passengers.

"A _cute_ baby!" Ty Lee swooned, bringing her in close and giving her Eskimo kisses to which Keiko's giggles intensified. "With cutie little pigtails" – she gave little tugs at the pigtails – "and _aww_ I just love her! Keiko, I'm going to dress you up just like _me_. I'll dye everything pink and-"

Mai was meanwhile trying to not get as sick as Zuko. "You weren't so lovey when it was concerning my brother."

"Well _yeah_," Ty Lee retorted, taking a second out from the sugar-talk to address her, "no one likes baby boys _nearly_ as much. You can't pamper them and dress them up all cute and stuff. It's a fact of life where ever you go."

Keiko made a small, haughty sound as if agreeing with her.

"Don't encourage her, Kei," Zuko grumbled though he hadn't moved an inch since take off. "That pink aura of hers is nauseating. We don't need it infecting anything else."

"I'm not an infection!" Ty Lee shot back icily but as soon as she'd realized the tone she turned back to Keiko to apologize. "If anything you two gloomy lumps could use some positive energy around you. Isn't that right, cutie-cub?"

"_Don't_ answer to that, Keiko!" But of course she did with another cheery giggle that prompted Ty Lee to embrace her tight. "Aww I want her! I'll trade you one of my sisters, Zuko."

"_No_."

After a while they went back to their former positions, not to inclined to talk between each other, each occupied elsewhere. There was no hope for peace and tranquility for Mai no matter how hard she tried, not when the swamp tunes, Ty Lee and Keiko's sugary babble and Zuko's reciting of teas all mashed together in one great mass of noise pollution.

Ty Lee was holding Keiko and walking her around along the planks when her nose suddenly pinched in disgust. "Eww! Eww! Cuteness gone! Somebody take her!"

"So much for feminine instincts," Mai mumbled, already having suspected her interests were more superficial than not.

Stopping mid-syllable on the details of Jasmine tea, Zuko shifted himself with much discomfort when he'd have much rather have stayed put. Before he could get fully upright Mai held him back with a hand to the chest. "This needs to be done as swiftly as possible," she said. "We don't need some amateur fumbling around and paining our noses longer than need be."

"I've changed her plenty of times," Zuko argued. It wasn't that hard after all.

"I have more practice," she said as she drew a hand back into an overhanging branch of leaves. Without even looking back, Mai felt by touch the size and density of the leaves like she were leafing through cloths in a marketplaces, twisted them off from the branch without ripping a single one. She worked as fast as she was able, lightly smacking Keiko's limbs when they got in the way, and soon enough Keiko was fitted with a swamp-baby's diaper.

"I'll take her back now!" and Ty Lee swiped Keiko right out from Mai like her abandonment of before had never happened.

Zuko had a stray thought of how either of them would turn out as mothers. He felt he had to thank Mai and he did even when she brushed him off like he knew she would. He'd been about to lay back down when he caught the sight of a small something in the brush.

Spiny green leaves, fat yellow buds and white petals…could it be? With a sudden spurt of energy Zuko leapt right out of the boat, nearly capsizing its touchy weight distribution. He moved with speed that belied his sickness all for that one glorious plant.

"What are you doing!?"

"Chamomile!" he exclaimed though to no one in particular. Zuko grabbed up a great bundle of the plant, the properties of which he knew by heart. "Apple-like scent, bitter herb tea infusion – stomachache killer! _Yes!_ Thank you, Uncle! I _love_ tea!" he declared with an almost manic emphasis on 'love'. "I've _always_ loved tea!"

The girls could easily see through such a blatant lie.

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Getting back a lost member of a group who the swamp dwellers barely even knew in the first place seemed more than enough for a cause for celebration for their festive nature and seemingly out of nowhere appeared platters of meat over a barbeque, a campfire, and music to set the mood.

"Let's get this hootenanny done started!" cried the leader of the local band and the people all roared in reply.

Fast-paced dance music that jarred all the senses alive and pumping played from banjoes, drums and moonshine jugs. The swamp folk weren't shy or embarrassed and the dance floor was full almost at once, Ty Lee jumping in as fast as any local.

More than an arm's length of space separated Zuko and Mai where they sat and the way things were going that space was more likely to widen rather than shorten.

Mai stared straight ahead at nothing. Zuko stared at the hollowed-out bigger-than-his-head gourd in his hands full of chamomile tea in its final stages of steeping, determined to fill his stomach full of the stuff. He couldn't stop himself from furtively glancing towards her every once in a while, racking his brain for the right thing to say.

Zuko nearly spilt his precious tea when Gumni plopped down between them and wrestled the two into rough, one-armed hugs.

"Get _off_ me." Mai shoved him off; Zuko did the same a second after.

"What ya doin' down here?" he asked friendly-like. "Party's over there! Anyways, I gots ya two some din'. Dig in!" Gumni pulled an oversized plate from behind his back like he was unveiling edible gold. It was full to the brim with barbequed rats-on-a-stick, huge insect pincers, and opossum-chicken legs.

He didn't care if the tea still had forty seconds to go, Zuko dunked his head into the gourd at once.

"_So_ many fond memories of Omashu," Mai drawled just looking at the pincers so fresh from the source that a few tiny legs still curled in instinct.

Gumni shrugged and chomped down on the bug's exoskeleton, ripping out a large chunk of meat; Zuko sprawled out right there on the ground in wait for the chamomile to do its magic and Mai felt no desire to talk to either one of them.

Keiko toddled out to them from somewhere in the throng, her few teeth sinking into the hindquarters of a deer, more to suck up its juices than anything else. It was much too large for her and it dragged across the ground. She let it go and first went to Mai for attention, who graced the baby with no reaction even when Keiko pulled at her long hair. Gumni caught the baby as she passed and roughed up with hair.

"Not _now_," Zuko growled when he felt a tug at his boot.

"_Zu!_" she insisted, graining her feet into the ground with earthbending and pulling harder. "Play!" Keiko wanted to dance but with her tiny size couldn't safely around all the big people; she got her wish when Ty Lee swept her up and away as a dance partner. All the eligible boys wanted to dance with her and she thought it the best way not to make anyone jealous.

The music sped up even faster and livelier than before and to make it more exciting people started jumping over the fire. Ty Lee took it one step further and back-flipped over it, which earned her a round of cheers.

"Come on, you guys, this is fun!"

Mai had had enough senseless noise for one day however. She got to her feet and left for the village without a word.

Zuko cracked an eye after her. He knew he was pushing it, that he was asking for a beating, but he followed after.

Their less than joyous moods weren't about to poison Ty Lee's and she got straight back into the festivities, sinking her teeth into a wing piece of a giant insect, not minding when Keiko bit into the same piece with her baby drool. It hadn't been over a minute since Mai and Zuko had left but Ty Lee jolted in place right there and not because of the dreadful taste.

Her legs, before so animated with dance, were encased in boots of ice.

"Nice to see you again, circus freak," said Katara with irony as she emerged from the shadows flanked on either side by Toph and Ursa.


	12. Chapter 12

Thank you all for your comments! MoonClaimed, you made me so happy and flattered! Thanks so much! I really love Keiko too. She's a sweetie. It was way fun writing about all that sugary stuff with her and Ty Lee too, AvatarAiris. I know it's overkill but that's why it's funny.  Glad you liked reading it as much as I liked writing it. Nothing all that interesting was really going on with Katara, Toph, and Ursa/Yangchen for a while and there was stuff going on with the others…so yeah. I thought it'd be cool to suddenly reintroduce them while you weren't expecting it.

Enjoy!

Arual-san

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"Nice to see you again, circus freak," said Katara with irony as she emerged from the shadows flanked on either side by Toph and Ursa.

Ty Lee reacted but not at all in the way they'd expected. "_Geez_, you two look roughed up," she commented, not derogatively but stating a fact.

What Ty Lee had said was pretty much on the mark what with Katara and Toph's soiled and ripped clothes and sagging postures due to lack of proper nutrition. Toph's healthy covering of earth might've been even too much for her when it grained into her clothing and compromised the quickness of her movements. In her less than pleasant state Katara was even more aggressive than her norm and threatened to fit Ty Lee with a whole suit of ice for her tongue. Toph made a step forward, drawing her arms on either side but the intimidating effect was lost when her stomach growled.

Ty Lee stared, then stifled a chuckle. "Oh, I see. You guys are just grumpy because you're hungry. Plenty of food to go around at the table over there."

An involuntary whine threatened to pass Toph's lips at all the wonderful smells that tantalized her nose. It was torture after so long of only eating tree roots for caution to avoid unknowns that could've been poisonous.

"Not a step forward, Toph."

"I know, I know!" the little earthbender growled back at Katara with even more bite than usual. "It's a pretty lame trick but _still_…_food_."

"As long as you're just hanging around," Katara started and the taunt in her voice was unmistakable, "would you mind telling us if our missing teammate is here?"

"Zuko's here," she confirmed, gracing Katara with no further information at the low blow. Even if Zuko's allegiances had changed Ty Lee had no doubt that he was any less of a friend to her and Mai because of it.

"Good," Toph replied forcefully. "This little adventure's outworn its welcome. It's time to go home."

As rock solid as Toph's stance was at all times, Ty Lee could've sworn she'd seen a slight sway in the young girl's feet at her weakened condition and Ty Lee stared with wide eyes. She knew better than to try and wriggle her feet free after being attacked by the Water Tribe girl for Katara would allow no weakness in the ice boots she'd fashioned for the other girl she knew to be so dangerous. No working was foolproof though; she could've stabbed her fingers away for a weak spot that would shatter the whole but she need not have exerted the energy.

One simpering smile to the young benders was all it took and they melted the water there at her feet.

All the merriment that the swamp folk had been celebrating before had come to a screeching halt and all attention was focused on the girls to see how things would go down. They were a peaceful folk at heart but wouldn't stand by if things were to escalate. Not able to fight to her full extent from the distance she was at, Katara and Toph fully expected Ty Lee to dart in on them at once.

The attack didn't come. Ty Lee only stared over at them in mild curiosity.

Far from overlooking the Fire Lady's presence, Ty Lee shifted the baby and the insect leg to her one arm, setting a fist to a palm and bowing in respects. For that short span of time the girl seemed to forget her two adversaries just waiting for her to slip so they could launch earth and water down on her in full force.

She set down the baby, gave a light push at her back.

"Go on, Sweet Pea, go say hi to your-" But Ty Lee stopped right there in mid-thought on sensing the aura change in Ursa so severe that it couldn't possibly still be her. As tuned in into human auras as she was, she'd noticed a few seconds sooner than Katara and Toph had but, even at her young age, Keiko had noticed fastest of all and with a whine clung to the back of Ty Lee's leg.

Not much less motherly than the baby's real mother, Yangchen extended a hand, said that there was nothing to fear, but Keiko clutched to Ty Lee's leg more tightly in response.

"My Lady," Ty Lee began, uncertain of what to say, "what-?"

"Hand over my student!" demanded Toph.

"But what happened to Zuko's mom? She didn't get possessed by some black-hearted spirit too, did she? And what do you mean _student_?" Ty Lee came back, her curiosity rising. "Keiko belongs to the Fire Nation."

"You'd be surprised, now hand her over!"

"Get your own baby! And besides, does it _look_ like she wants to come over? Poor thing's shivering in her little booties."

Rather than aid either side in coming to some sort of resolution, Yangchen instead chose to vacate the scene in search of any trace at all of a salad bar amongst the legions of meat. An air nomad, she was a peaceful creature who preferred to avoid fighting at all costs, that and there was the fact that she was no mother hen and the three girls were no small children to be taken care of. They could work it out themselves.

"We'd prefer not to attack in Keiko's presence," Katara responded to Ty Lee, "but we _will_ if you don't cooperate! You're outnumbered!"

"Uh," Ty Lee gestured to all of the waterbenders behind her, "no I'm not."

In no mood to be contradicted nor carry on an argument Toph reiterated, "Give us Keiko!"

By now some small amount of the ecstasy Ty Lee had been feeling previously was beginning to be replaced by a sense of irritation she tried so hard to avoid. She set an arm akimbo and stood her ground. "Why'd you have to go and crash a good party? And what's so bad about me? The kid's warmed up to me quick enough."

"Only because she doesn't know the real you," Katara countered.

"You're not so sinless yourself," the other girl returned. "I saw how badly your team trashed the Earth Kingdom Palace to speak with the king. The end justifies the means, huh? What do you think I'm going to do, roast the baby over the spit?"

"Your nation was all too eager to roast its former queen so yeah, maybe!"

"I had _nothing_ to do with that!" Ty Lee shot back, indignant. "I've been in jail and in this swamp the whole time!"

"Enough talk," barked Katara and she itched not only to get an overdue payback but also the bad feelings she'd picked up from trudging through muck half-starving all day. "Get the baby out of the way. You and I fight now!"

Ty Lee however made no move to take on a combat position that she'd taken on so many times before when facing their team. The only movement she made was to fold her arms into themselves and in doing so both she and Katara reflected the other girl's native element more than her own.

The circus performer gave a shrug of the shoulders like it didn't matter at all. "I don't really see the point."

Katara was the indignant one now. "You _don't_ see the point!?"

"No, I don't," said Ty Lee. "You must have heard what happened at the Boiling Rock. Azula doesn't forgive, not for anything. Even if I were to defeat you both, torture information out of you and deliver you and the Avatar to her with a pretty ribbon on top I'd still get thrown straight back in jail if I _ever_ returned."

"All those times you hunted us down-!"

"All in the line of duty for my nation and my princess," Ty Lee replied, still not at all rising to a fight. "I've never had anything against you and yours. You were just on the wrong side."

Not in the slightest did either Katara or Toph appreciate her choice of words even if for the well meaning way in which they were intentioned. In the sour, hungry moods they were in they could've argued the point for several minutes more, taken up a new and pointless fight all for the sake of bad feelings to another on every occasion they'd met before but the swamp dwellers would have none of it.

"Well thar ya have it," said one of the older men with a big potbelly: the village leader. "Lil' girl don't wanna fight so thar ain't gonna be no fight. First person that done starts one gets thrown out into the night ta sleep with the critters."

"_But-!_" Katara and Toph protested in one voice for it was about the worst thing they could be sentenced after what they'd just gone through but before they could utter a single word further a round of cheers came from all the rest of the villagers, affirming their leader's decision.

Toph stomped between either foot in a contained fit. "Ugh, _fine!_ As long as I get fed!" She was off just as quick as she'd made her decision but hadn't gotten more than three steps before she was held back by the scruff of her shirt. "Oh come on, Katara!"

"After all we've been through you can't rough it a little in the cold and the dark?"

"And the _hungry!_" Toph came back, making sure that Katara didn't forget. "The femme fatales chose Zuko, not Princess Psycho! What more do you need to know?"

"Would you stop thinking with your stomach, rock-head?" Katara scolded and she felt she may as well have been scolding her brother. "Ty Lee is our enemy."

"So was Zuko," Toph replied, ready. "I think she made a pretty good point. I'd be shocked if Azula's forgiven anyone for anything _ever_."

"I remember," Ty Lee supplied, "for a whole week she blasted Zuko's shoes on fire every time he turned a corner in the palace halls for him eating a fruit tart that she'd wanted. Poor guy nearly barricaded himself in his room out of paranoia."

"That's…disturbing," Katara uttered as her mind processed what evils Azula was committing at the same age when Katara had been playing with dollies like a normal child. "It still doesn't earn you any trust though."

"_Ka – tar – aaaa…_" Toph pleaded in hunger, latching onto her arm and pulling a sad, sad face, going completely out of character if only for a scrap of those luscious smells that screamed in her nostrils.

"Shake on it," Gumni suggested as if such a simple thing could solve all their troubles.

Katara pulled her head away in a haughty matter that erased all traces of sweetness from her face, the perfect imitation of a blossoming noble girl. The water that lay melted at Ty Lee's feet she recalled and fashioned into a flowing five foot extension to her arm: the closest she was willing to come in contact if only because she had no other choice.

"Are you _nuts!?_" Ty Lee demanded of her, not satisfied at Katara's effort. "I'm _not_ touching that thing, no way!"

"And I'm not getting _anywhere_ near you!"

Toph snapped out of her phony show of pleading as easily as she'd snapped out of the role the high society girl she'd had to play in Ba Sing Se. She was her usual tomboy self again and that true form of hers was nothing if not practical. "Okay, here's what's going to happen. You two can shake and shake _hands_ like it's supposed to be done. There's plenty of us here as witnesses. You swamp-benders are free to subdue Katara if she makes any dishonorable show and I'll do the same to Ty Lee. Happy?"

Katara wasn't convinced. "After I become a boneless pile on the ground, that is?"

"_Grrr!_" Toph was so sick of it all. "If Ty Lee so much as moves her pinky funny I'll bend her up to her neck in the ground, dump honey on her head, and let scorpion-ants bite her all night, okay!?"

"_Hey!_" Ty Lee shouted at once for the gross unfairness of that deal, when all the soft swamp folk would do would be to tie Katara's wrists and even give her a blanket for the night.

"Deal!" Katara said before Ty Lee could protest any further.

The two girls marched up to another and swung their hands into one. There they held them longer than necessary, maybe trying to break the other's bones, maybe trying to burn out the other's retinas through glares.

They let go and parted ways...or at least attempted to when both their destinations was the table laden with food which Toph had pounced upon just as soon as she was able.

As soon as Toph had arrayed every kind of meat there was available to the point of breaking her plate under the weight, drowned it in all in barbeque sauce, settled Keiko there at her front, and dove in she was sure that there no seasoning that the richest in all the lands could boast that was more potent than the seasoning of hunger.


	13. Chapter 13

Hey everybody, funny thing, it was the snowstorm last time, now it's icy roads that have given me free time to write. Lucky you!

Ugh, Katara was annoying to write in the last chapter. I don't like how she only sees things in terms of good and evil with no grey area in between. Lame. Wasn't expecting this story to go on so long when I first conceived it but I'm having fun so whatever. Got a great idea for my next story that you guys are going to love but I'm not telling you what it is until I release it. Nyah, nyah, nyah. XD

Have fun and don't forget to send in those reviews! I love my reviews!

Arual-san

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Far from expecting a warm welcome, Zuko nevertheless trailed after Mai when she'd stormed out on the festivities as he knew she would from the moment they began. He knew he was pushing it, that the chamomile hadn't any time to take effect but still he kept a safe distance, almost tried convincing himself that his presence could've possibly gone unnoticed but such was near impossible with Mai's sharp instincts. He ducked behind a hut whenever she looked around.

Another girl, namely Ty Lee, might've laughed at his less than capable stalking abilities; Mai merely scowled and kept on course. She brushed past the reed curtains of the hut she was currently staying in and was gone.

There was no movement in the village besides the dying sway of the reeds, no sound since everyone was back at the party having fun. They were alone and the thought had a bizarre way of both relieving Zuko and terrifying him at the same time.

He could guess at the wrath of a woman scorned.

Zuko reached for the reeds but drew back as if hit by an electrical current as if only just realizing the thing he was about to do. Making like he'd meant to do it all along, he moved that hand to grip the back of his neck to gather himself. He paced forward and back, racking his brain for the right thing to say, wishing he'd paid more attention to Uncle Iroh's way of charming women during their long journey.

He came back to the day he'd tried to give Mai a pretty conch he'd found on the beach only for her to reject it and reflected that Mai was definitely not one to be easily won over.

Several times Zuko reached for the curtains only to draw back at the last moment.

Mai's voice drifted out from the hut. "Are you waiting for an _invitation?_"

Her low and dangerous tone would've sent a weaker man running for dear life.

Zuko didn't run but he jolted there on the spot. It was their loom conversation all over again: he was being wishy-washy, caught between a rock and a hard place, and irritating Mai to the limits her scales reached because of it.

Her harsh words were an invitation nonetheless and one he ought to take if ever he knew what was good for him.

He parted the curtains and instinctively braced himself for a dagger to come flying left of his head an inch just to enforce how deep in trouble he was in with her but any sort of predictability was a weakness and such weakness had been trained out of Mai in training at the Fire Nation Academy. She sat cross-legged, back facing him, and it was her stillness that chilled him more than the scenario he'd been bracing himself for.

Zuko sat and still Mai didn't turn, not a strand of her perfectly maintained hair, worn down, shifted from place.

"Mai…" Zuko supposed he had to talk to that long length of hair in place of her face.

No reaction.

"Why are you _doing_ this again?" He couldn't help but feel a little frustration despite his anxiety. "I already went over with you why I left. It's not _you_; it's about doing what's right!"

"_Yeah?_ Well _explain_ it again. It couldn't hurt."

"Mai-"

She didn't let him get that far. "Things were going so well. We'd secured our victory in Ba Sing Se after even General Iroh couldn't penetrate its walls, earned a place in history for years to come. I hadn't seen you for _years_…and there you were again."

"Mai…"

"You had what you wanted after such a long time away from home: your honor, your banishment lifted…your father's approval. I…I don't understand. Everything was going back to normal, _better_ than normal." Despite her discontent, Mai couldn't lie. "I was _happy_ for you. Weren't you happy too?"

"If I was I'd have stayed."

"You're _never_ happy, are you?" Mai returned and she whipped round. "You just love wallowing in your own misery. _Joining_ the _rebels_ – you may as well have reserved a seat on executioner's row. _How_ did your Uncle ever put up with you?"

Somehow the two knew she might've taken it farther with how _she_ could've ever put up with him. That line wasn't crossed.

The reason Zuko had left was for the reasons he had given time and again but that wasn't the exclusive point of the argument they were having, not the way Mai saw it.

"I wasn't _completely_ unhappy."

"Oh shut up!" she barked back, not wanting to hear it. "Don't start with me, Zuko!"

Sounds that couldn't be ignored came from the direction of the party.

"We'd prefer not to attack in Keiko's presence but we _will_ if you don't cooperate! You're outnumbered!"

"Give us Keiko!"

Though his stance was directed squarely towards Mai, Zuko's eyes shifted to their corners to a forceful Katara and Toph that were the source. "_That_ doesn't sound good."

For letting his attention stray for even a moment away from her, Mai glared at him with all the livid intensity of when he had locked her up in the Boiling Rock. He got back to her quickly but her glare didn't lessen. "I wouldn't have done this if I didn't have to. I thought it over a long time, tried to work out different possibilities. I did what I thought was best."

"And _I_ had no say in the matter at all."

"I had more than enough things to worry about! Adding you to them was another complication that I didn't need!" What Zuko said was the truth but in order to make her understand he hadn't thought to soften the way he said it. Some amount of hurt surfaced on Mai's face but Zuko continued, "You would have tried to stop me. You and I both know that."

Mai turned away, trying to mask her feelings. "I would have…but I wouldn't have ratted you out."

To Zuko that meant a lot, her loyalty to him over anyone else, and it was why he hadn't wanted her to be potentially dragged down with him when his plan had had so many chances for failure. He'd been about to say something to that degree when Katara's voice shook with anger.

"Get the baby out of the way. You and I fight now!"

"Oh _man_," he grimaced. He'd been looking forward to joining up with the girls again but the timing couldn't have been worse. "Uh listen, Mai, this'll take just a minute-"

She went straight back to her death glare where before it had been softening but a small change had happened. Her dark pupils wavered in their sockets, shone more than usual.

"Don't – you – _dare_," she hissed lowly and she almost shook in saying the three short words.

"If I don't do something Ty Lee and Katara are going to kill each other."

"I – don't – _care_."

"I'm on good relations with both of them," he said, knowing that very few others could say the same, "I just-" But Zuko stopped right there and Mai didn't even need to say anything further. The look she gave him stopped him in his tracks.

The words could've almost materialized on her face: If you leave me _again_, if you leave me _one_ – _more_ – _time_…

If he walked out on her as she was now, even for a couple minutes, even to do this one simple thing, their relationship which supports were already so wavering and frail would shatter entirely in her eyes without any chance of being repaired.

While he couldn't stifle his concern for the commotion about to go down outside, Zuko eased his arm where before he'd been using it to pull himself up. His time belonged to Mai right then and no one else and he made sure that she knew that.

Silence spanned for a few extra long moments and when Mai picked it up again he was surprised that she no longer spoke in anger.

"Do you know what it's been like for me these past three years?" Mai asked, knowing full well that he didn't. "Do you know what it was like when you were gone?"

"No," he said and he didn't bother to say that his years away were probably much rougher than hers.

"On the day of your Agni Kai I came to see you, couldn't understand how you could take a thing so lightly, like it was a game. When you refused to fight, when the Fire Lord – when he-" She couldn't complete the sentence but it was burned into their memories. "People were cheering. _Cheering_. I was so disgusted over how Azula looked I wanted to duel her right there and then. She lost my devotion that day, fully and absolutely, no matter how contrary it might've appeared.

They wouldn't let me into the infirmary to see you. I wasn't even allowed to _see_ you," and how she said it the nurses might've thought that the prince's deemed cowardice could be seen as contagious to still fine-standing children of the courts. "You were pulled away on that stretcher so fast, carted away and banished in less than a day. I didn't even have a chance to say goodbye."

"Mai…" he started, feeling for her but not knowing what to say.

"Ty Lee and I," she plowed on and she couldn't stop, having kept it bottled up for far too long, "we asked when you were coming home, asked anyone we could, but no one knew, no one cared. As the months wore on I wasn't even permitted to say your name without punishment. If it was possible to outlaw a name than the Fire Lord did it. It was like he wanted to stomp your memory down until there was nothing left. You…" she struggled to say it through old pain, "you don't know what that was like."

He laid a hand over hers and was glad that she didn't pull away.

"Even if I wasn't allowed to speak freely I kept you alive, I didn't forget about you like they all wanted me to. I managed to steal one of your portraits that first night before they boarded up your room." The penalty for thieving a royal possession was a steep price and as Mai was vividly aware Fire Lord Ozai would have shown no restraint to a second thirteen-year-old in that same day. "_So_ long with only that portrait," she said sadly. "That face didn't grow older, it was still…_whole_."

Zuko gripped her hand in efforts to comfort her. Even if he had had the ease of talking that Azula had he was fairly certain that there were no words that could soothe away all the deep hurt she was making herself relive.

"It was so hard to find anyone that really understood me," said Mai and her voice had lowered to a whisper in this deep and personal truth. "All the other girls were like Ty Lee, happy and perky, but with you I…I felt that for once I wasn't a porcelain doll," she said, speaking of her parents, "or a _tool_" she continued, speaking of both her teachers and Azula. "You _never_ treated me like that."

He continued to soothe that hand. He hadn't treated her like that because he had seen that there was much more to her that scratched the surface.

"I waited three years, three _years_ for you to return!" she yelled at him suddenly, spending heavily the emotion she fought so hard to conceal. "_How_ could you leave me _again!?_"

"Mai, I…I'm sorry."

"_Sorry?_ You're _so_ sorry?" she bit back, anger and hurt wrestling for top bidding. "You can't just hand out apologies like daisies! Am I so easy to cast aside!?"

"You were the _only_ thing I cared about leaving behind!" he argued fervently.

"You _still_ left."

"I _had_ to leave!" he came back. "Here in this swamp, this is only your first interaction with any other culture, people different from our nation. I spent months in the Earth Kingdom undercover. I was one of them and in that time I saw how just how much they hated us. All this effort into the war, we're trying to fix something that was never broken."

"Our nation is more advanced, more civilized-"

"But we have no right to force those things on them! They were _thriving_, they were _happy_ without us! I know that swamp life isn't for you but haven't you seen that with these people? Do you really want them to convert to our ways, lose all the things that make up their culture?"

Her face creased with some unease. "They would never be able to pull off anything dignified."

"No, they wouldn't but that isn't the point. Is it really worth losing so many lives to slake the Fire Lord's arrogance, his, my grandfather, and great-grandfather's, while they overlook it all safely from their throne? I lost my cousin, Katara and Sokka lost their mother, and I know that you've lost aunts and uncles too! They didn't need to die!"

"Stop it!"

"No, I won't stop it! You need to hear this, Mai! The Fire Lord burned off half of my face, his _son_, for wanting to spare a group of fledging warriors from slaughter. You've seen Azula's ruthlessness. Can you imagine the terror they'd bring if they were to rule the four nations?"

"If the other nations had only been open to change, if they didn't have to cause so much trouble-"

"They're defending their homes and their loved ones; their freedom to live as they want, to _say_ what they want." He referred of course to when his very name had been prohibited for her to say aloud. "The balance in the world has been devastated and it is the Avatar's destiny to restore order. If I can play a part in ending this war than I would be honored."

He had said a lot in defense of his argument and he took a short breather. "Realizing how the rest of the world thinks, seeing what position that places you in under your moral codes…loyalties to one side or another can't be changed in a single day. It's why I didn't come to you before I left after the invasion."

Zuko had argued his point well; Mai could see that he had indeed thought things through, that he had most likely thought them through for months. She had been quiet for a few long minutes as he talked but she spoke now.

"You didn't just brush me aside to join the Avatar's quest?"

"No," he said and he could see that she believed him. "If there had been any other way I'd have taken it. I…" he started, gulping but then resolving himself, "I love you, Mai. You know that right?"

Her face, always so expressionless that she could've been wearing a mask, went still. Her lips that always seemed so frozen in a permanent frown pulled at the sides into a content grin, a subtle act but from her one that made Zuko want to kiss her on the spot. He didn't however act on that impulse, unsure if he was still in the doghouse, but felt that he had to tell her.

Mai's fingers crawled round the back of Zuko's neck and she pulled him into that kiss that he so coveted. It didn't last long but when she pulled out there was no bitterness on her face left to be found.

"Don't break up with me again, Zuko."

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FYI: I realize that the transitions in this chapter may not be as smooth as usual. I thought that since Mai was hurt, frustrated and all these things were bottled up inside her for so long that she might change tones and subjects erratically a couple times in order to just get everything out. That she isn't well practiced in expressing a wide range of emotions I thought that unveiling so many in one sitting might go less smoothly for her than it would another character and that Zuko would have to just try to keep up and not upset her.  
The yells from Katara and Toph might've broken it up a little but it in turn showed just how serious Mai was in the matter about him abandoning her a third time, also that Zuko is now aware that the rest of his group has caught up to him at last.  
So that's my reasoning for those two points.

Peace out!


	14. Chapter 14

The bad feelings that had loomed between Zuko and Mai like a thick fog had all evaporated as they made their way back to the village together, not for the merry-making but because neither had eaten in a long while and in good conscious they should probably check on their feuding friends. Katara's formally dormant darker side was becoming harder to ignore than it had been on her initial voyage and Zuko didn't want to take any chances.

"You know," Zuko started, looking his again-girlfriend over from toe to tip in her leafy garb and lowered black hair, "I kind of like this new look on you."

"It's better than grungy prisoner uniforms anyway," Mai shrugged off.

"Nah, it looks nice. _You_ make it look nice."

"Oh stop," she said back though not completely displeased, "you know flattery will get you nowhere. I've forgiven you…_mostly_. No need to waste your breath in-"

"Can't a guy compliment his girl when she looks pretty?" he asked though a large part his attraction to her was just the fact of seeing her again at all. Crude as the beetle itself might've been, its shell was a good comparison the swamp folk made to how her raven black hair shone under the moonlight.

It was a better analogy than he, "Mr. Smooth", could make in any right.

Any girl that lived and breathed in the four nations had some degree of vanity and although Mai's was not so high as her best friend Ty Lee's it didn't mean it was nonexistent. A content grin, always subtle on her, formed in her lips. Now that she'd permitted herself to talk to him again she did.

"Everything was so orderly back at the palace and now…all these changes. Ty Lee and I haven't really been alone before like we were when we were sent to prison, after we escaped. There were always reinforcements, food, and creature comforts."

"It takes some getting used to, I know," Zuko replied and he knew the experience firsthand from traveling with his uncle.

"I didn't like it, no I _dreaded_ it at first," she continued, "but being in those sorts of unfamiliar situations it was strangely…_challenging_." The way she said it she may have enjoyed it in some minuscule way. "We hadn't had wilderness survival training so we had to adjust to fit the environment."

Zuko could see the girls managing well for themselves, even if it was scouring the woods for spark stones. "You stayed away from the berries, I hope?"

"Ty Lee wanted to eat the brightest, reddest ones there were."

"But something _this_ pretty could _never_ be poisonous!" Zuko squeaked in a high pitched voice in a horrible imitation of Ty Lee but the words were so dead on with what she would say that Mai's lips again turned up when they'd been beginning to return to normal.

"You've been busy yourself too," she said as they reached the outer ring of the party and sat down on a log. Dinner could wait. "You found your mother and you have _another_ sister. I would've thought your mother would have stopped at her _second_."

"Keiko's not so bad," Zuko put simply.

"You know, I thought that search for the kid would've taken much longer than it did. With _you_ as a babysitter I was honestly expecting to have to slice open some bog beast's stomach to get her back."

His former look of ease went long in humiliation. "_Uhhh_…"

Mai turned to stare at him with a flat look that could read it all from his expression alone. She looked away and blunt as could be stated that she wasn't leaving any of their children alone with him without a nanny present.

"C-children?" he stammered back, the only word he'd heard from her.

"Some day, yes," Mai replied logically. "There are no other guys I plan on being interested in and I assume it's the same vice versa. If it's all the same to you I would prefer one child: one "joy" of childbirth, no sibling rivalries after Iroh and Ozai, you and Azula." She paused when it all seemed like news to him. "Haven't you considered this at all? When another year passes we'll be of marrying age back home."

"Well yeah but-"

"Seventeen years hasn't been enough time to get to know me?" she said in her low voice, toying with him.

"It's not that."

"The Fire Lord must have heirs to carry on the bloodline. Be thankful, for it's only for that reason that I would undergo such a thing."

"Uh, Mai," he started, reasoning with how to state the obvious when their relations were so newly mended.

"Azula is next in line for the position, I'm well aware," Mai headed him off. Something glinted in her eye and it wasn't a glare or the like. "I think you might just make a better candidate than her."

She hadn't said the jist of it outright but Zuko got it right there. "Wait, are you saying-?"

"Loyalties can't be changed in a day, it's true," she said, quoting his earlier words. "Mine's always been like this so it isn't changing. I'm not going to sit this one out when you attempt another invasion. If I can help you regain your birthright than I'm going to do it."

It was too much to ask of her, of anyone, to change all that they had been raised to believe to do what was best not just for any one nation but the world as a whole. Given the same time and experiences Zuko had had may have opened Mai's mind to the plights of the other nations but as it was she was joining the resistance for him and him alone and he couldn't ask any more of her.

"Mai, I-" he started, the incredible gratitude he felt reducing his grasp of words less than usual.

She laid two long fingers to his lips before he could say more. "Don't go getting soppy on me, Zuko. We're back together so I think I deserve a nice meal. Go fetch me something without pincers or eyeballs and please make sure that it's good and dead."

Zuko saw her off with a peck to the cheek and left to do that very thing.

While she waited Mai killed time by talking to some of the middle-aged women, more calm, mature, and of her wavelength than the younger ones friendly with Ty Lee. It didn't take long and her eyes were darting between their faces and their plates. Where was Zuko?

"Excuse me," she said, nodding her head to the women and rising to her feet.

The party hadn't wound down even two hours in and she had to fight her way through the crowd, scan through for any sign of maroon amongst a field of leafy green. Mai found him in the midst of a group of hunters looking uncomfortable, trying to smile.

"Heh, sorry," Zuko said nervously, knowing he deserved the irritated expression she wore, offering a full plate to her in condolences. "The storyteller wanted something new to tell tonight and they'd heard I've traveled the world from Ty Lee and-"

Mai didn't care to hear the rest of his excuses of how he'd been pressured into divulging his misadventures or how he hadn't the spine to just flat out refuse after one of theirs had exorcized him. She just grabbed him by his good ear and pulled him out.

"I _just_ want something to eat," she scowled, shifting her grip on him from ear to sleeve so they wouldn't get separated again. "Dinner and bed, it's not asking much, I just-"

The noisy, busy crowd was the perfect cover and in that they were further not paying attention the two were both at once seized unawares and yanked backward right into where Katara, Toph, Ty Lee, Ursa, Keiko, and Momo were waiting and had been for some time. Ty Lee, who had grabbed Mai, pulled her to sit in the place she'd saved just for her while Toph wasn't quite so ready to relinquish her hold on Zuko, hugging him around the waist in only the way a young girl could in that their group was together again at last.

"Welcome back to the family, Zuko!"

Most of the mismatched group pulled faces at that, some uglier than others.

"Our dysfunctional, oddball family that I wouldn't have any other way!" Toph further clarified and she patted the ground for him to take a place beside her and Keiko. "So how'd you manage with the squirt? Is his hair any grayer, Katara?"

"Things went fine."

"Did _everything_ go fine?"

"_Yes_," Zuko came back and he didn't want to get into the details that reflected less than well on him or made him look weak in a demon gaining control over him. Keiko was in one piece after all and he'd even gotten her to like him out of it. He saw that proof when Keiko took Toph's lead and toddled over, prying open a spot between him and her for a place to sit.

"Cheater!" Toph remarked to the baby. "I marked your names on your reserved seats and everything! You're messing up my arrangements!"

Keiko didn't care as they knew she wouldn't but she took it one step further by ignoring the wily earthbender and latching hold of Zuko's leg.

"I won't train anyone that doesn't give me due respect!" she barged on but then changed tenses a second after. "Ha ha, come back to Boom-Boom, Kei, and let the guy eat."

"Boo-boo," Keiko said, reaching back for Toph.

"I know 'M' is one of the harder letters to say, squirt, but don't go getting lazy on me," Toph said as if the toddler could understand her. "Although…I probably _do_ hand out a whole lot of boo-boo's too. Eh, either or."

Since the two had joined their circle Katara's attention was not peeled on either Ty Lee or Mai for attack but on Zuko and as the minutes passed she couldn't stay silent anymore.

"Don't you notice anything different!?" she demanded of him, insulted when he wasn't. "Anything at all!?"

Mai looked up from an opossum-chicken wing to her. "You've lost your precious hair beads, peasant?"

"_Zuko_," In Katara's tone he could see that he'd better stop eating and find out what it was that vexing her and find it out five minutes ago. He didn't dare ask what but looked round the group, each of their faces illuminated by the campfire in the center, to find the answer.

His gaze ended on his mother.

From there Zuko stared her down more intensely than he would have normally, seeing that something wasn't right with her and only her. She saw the world from a different set of eyes, just like he had under the red glare of the kuwanji.

His hand flashed and a pointed stick from the fire, glowing orange with ember, was pointed square at her chest.

"Get out of her _now_."

Zuko didn't need to raise his voice: it chock-full of quiet ferocity, anger as passionate as his days chasing the Avatar in that he ever had to raise a weapon to his own mother.

He would never harm her even to save her but the spirit using her body didn't know as much.

"It's nothing to worry about, Zuko," said Katara and she liked to think she'd have noticed much sooner had the same happened to her father. "Avatar Yangchen only needs to borrow her for a little while. I just wanted to make sure you knew."

"That's pretty bad," Ty Lee for once more sober than sunny.

"I haven't seen her in years here and I was kind of occupied!"

"It's _still_ bad."

"What's another Avatar doing around here anyway?" he ran with, trying to veer the conversation off his lacking intuition. "I have enough trouble with one as is."

"She's the one who brought us here to pick up the girls," Toph supplied happily. "Yangchen also says that there's still Air Nomads left out there somewhere and the stuff she knows, the stuff she's seen, _man_-"

"She wrecked our balloon!" Zuko interjected. "None of those things will matter if we don't make it back to the Western Air Temple in time for the comet! Did it slip your mind, Avatar, this hundred year war that's been going on!?"

All this while, ever since she and the girls had made contact with the tribe, Avatar Yangchen had felt no need to speak, preferring to observe than interact, and had not been jarred from that in being directly addressed until now.

"I've not forgotten, Prince Zuko." She addressed him by his proper title to more so establish the difference between her and Ursa when they spoke with the same voice. "I have nothing in mind but the best interests of you all."

"_This_-" – Zuko threw his hands high to the swamp – "is _not_ helping!"

"You wouldn't speak to your mother with such a tone," Yangchen said, a hint of scolding in her voice at not being shown proper respect.

"You're _not_ her…no matter how much you look it."

Yangchen decided to overlook the comment; her mere presence appeared distressing to both the woman's children. "I've had this all mapped out for some time, that you happened to become separated from the others was not my plan but you all are here together now. I've done what I intended and I think that it's time that you were sent on your way."

"Then you have a way for us to get out of here?" Katara asked, leaning closer with longing.

"Naturally."

"Then point us in the right direction and get out of my mom's body." Zuko had trouble keeping the upset out of his voice but for good measure he added, "_Please_. We're on a tight schedule."

"Yes, I'm aware," And Yangchen was short in her reply. "There is one more thing that I would like to help with before you leave, something that won't take long, I assure you."

"What's up?" asked Toph.

"I wonder if I might take a look at the baby for a moment. I believe she is of mixed heritage, yes?" Yangchen was given an affirmative as she knew she would be. "Any advantage should be seized, even if her abilities are only potent enough for a distraction if worse comes to worse."

"We're not bringing her into battle!" Katara exclaimed, offended and Ty Lee seconded that.

"I should hope not but hiding in the Fire Nation itself is always a risky venture. There are eyes everywhere, you can see as much in the ease with how the Fire Lady was apprehended for execution. If you give Keiko to me," Avatar Yangchen said and ears were only for her, "I can tell you which element resides more strongly within her, which element to discard."

Some of the group was surprised, others dumbstruck. A few seconds passed where they could only stare at the past Avatar but among them only Toph found her voice.

"You can _do_ that?"

Yangchen nodded. "It is an uncommon task to come upon but yes I can."

"She's right," Katara said and she walked to Keiko, scooping her up in her arms. "Any advantage we can get we need to take." But once she'd come within an arm's length of Ursa the baby suddenly went from calm on latching onto her front like a leech.

"No! No!"

"Keiko, it's okay." Katara wrapped her arms around the little body as Keiko buried her face into her breast to look anywhere that was away from her fake mother. There wasn't anything to be done; no explanation simple enough to give that would make her understand. Katara didn't like what she had to do but she pried Keiko off and handed her over, struggling and whining, to the Avatar.

Another person might have unhanded a toddler in such obvious distress and on the brink of crying but Yangchen kept a firm but gentle hold over her radiating nothing but kindness as she scanned the baby much deeper than a human eye could penetrate.

Not a full minute had passed and Yangchen had seen all that she'd needed to see. When she looked away she found that attention was still for nothing but her, not even a whisper had passed for fear of distracting her.

She took in them all on the edge of their dirt seats, waiting for her to speak, every one except for Mai but even she could not feign a total lack of interest. This one revelation was pivotal in how the life of one young bender would unfold.

Avatar Yangchen shut her eyes and even the baby seemed less inclined to struggle.

"She will be a magnificent waterbender."

Wound up so tight for the news, Katara and Zuko's faces shattered like a stone to glass but once Toph and Ty Lee heard a very contained fit of chuckles from Yangchen's direction they understood.

Airbenders had always been known for their sense of humor.

Toph and Ty Lee couldn't contain themselves. They burst out laughing at how she'd played them so well and how they'd never expected through her calm demeanor. Their laughter escalated so that it was hard to speak when they saw that Katara and Zuko were still frozen in place.

"Ha, ha, ha!" Ty Lee sputtered out, nearing losing her balance but falling over Zuko to steady herself. "You…you should've seen your face! Yeah – yeah-" she breathed, looking at him and seeing it unchanged, "it looked like _that!_ Ha, ha, ha!"

"Poor Katara," Toph chuckled and she smooshed her friend's cheeks into a fish face, "her face is stuck like that _forever!" _She kept playing with Katara's face like it was mask of clay and Katara didn't say a word against it.

The two laughing girls fell back from teasing Katara and Zuko for their bellies had begun to hurt and in that they could both appreciate a good joke they tried gripping each other just to keep balanced. Everything was fine until Toph threw one of her friendly punches.

"What're you hitting me for!?" demanded Ty Lee, not expecting it. Her hand drew back dangerously. "We're _supposed_ to have a truce!"

Toph too was caught off guard when her arm suddenly went limp and dead and she wouldn't take that sitting down. Their war of earthbending versus pressure points went down with no small amount of noise and bickering and only then did Katara and Zuko begin to collect themselves. They turned and saw Toph flat on her back, paralyzed, and Ty Lee buried up to her head in a great dirt mound just like Toph had threatened to do earlier that night. Neither had yet consented to defeat; Toph could still move her toes and Ty Lee her head and the two struggled for any way they could use that as the others were merely content to watch.

Finally, after much straining and pulling, Ty Lee managed to secure a pebble in her teeth. Taking careful aim, she spat it and it connected flat-on with Toph's nose.

"Ha! I won! I won! And with _your_ earth too!"

"Best two out of three!"

"Would you two knock it off!?" Zuko didn't bother trying to conceal his overwhelming annoyance when there were more important things to consider. He dug Ty Lee out of her earthy prison and ordered her to restore Toph plain and simple, no gloating. He turned back to Yangchen.

"Forgive me," she said, getting out the last of her chuckles. "You were all just so…I couldn't resist."

The Avatar stepped to her feet with the baby of two nations held out before her and her serene expression held no more false answers. Toph felt with her right foot and Zuko looked to his left side.

They were the only two left standing: the two potential teachers.

Avatar Yangchen stepped forward, the direction of her next step determining all.

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_Bwahahaha! _This is positively the most _evil_ cliffhanger I've _ever_ posted and probably will ever post again! I've been looking forward to writing this chapter ever since I'd conceived this story and here it is finally.

Who will be Keiko's new teacher? I think I know who I'm going to give her to but feel free to try convincing me otherwise and I just might consider it! Keiko's still going to be able to bend both elements until she's like two. They're just going to exclusively train her in either earth or fire to make the most of her abilities until the weaker one dies out like it would have anyway.

_You_ may or may not change the course of this story with your reviews! Send them in!

Arual-san


	15. Chapter 15

To the little group nestled only on the outside borders of the merrymaking all noise had been drowned out, all eyes were on Avatar Yangchen and, whether they were aware of it or not, everyone's breath was held for the outcome, unable to breathe until they were answered.

The Avatar was unfazed by the intense attention as any experienced avatar would be. Her second step veered left.

She handed the baby to Toph.

"Congratulations."

To the right, empty handed, Zuko's limbs felt weighted down to the point of dragging him down in his great disappointment. He'd wanted to train Keiko more than he'd let himself admit. He supposed there had been no other way for Avatar Yangchen to deliver the news but he only listened half-heartedly even when she mentioned that the levels of fire and earth had been very close: about a 48/52 ratio. It was no one's fault that the royal bloodline had not won out over an Earth Kingdom commoner and Yangchen was not so petty to spin a story when Zuko had been less than courteous to her.

Toph was ecstatic as she bounced her new student in her arms and she playfully dubbed Keiko with an official nickname of 'Sprout'.

"Because you're only a little seedling now," she said to the baby. "But oh-" – she rocketed Keiko up high above her head – "how you'll grow!"

Despite the disappointment that had free range over the most of him Zuko felt some miniscule amount of congratulations for Toph. He'd been about to force a small smile but it died on his face when Katara rushed up and the girls became lost in cheer.

He'd thought that in their excitement that they'd forgotten him but when he'd turned to sit back down…

"Zuko," came Toph's voice and she had sobered it in a way he'd not thought possible, "are you going to be okay with this?"

He'd stopped but he didn't turn. He took a few seconds longer than normal to respond. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well…" Katara began, trying to be delicate, "it's just that you two seem to have gotten closer in the time we were separated."

"What makes you think that?" he came back a little defensively. "_I_ didn't say anything. Do you have any idea how much _easier_ it would've been without the drool machine and fuzzball?"

"You didn't need to say anything." Katara supposed she shouldn't be too surprised that she had to say as much. "You protected Keiko, kept her safe and secure…just like any good big brother should."

That he didn't try to deny. He stared at nothing; thinking, nodding randomly when Mai and Ty Lee added their input, that he would still be able to see Keiko every day, still take a part in raising his sister and watching her grow.

He was a brother again, Zuko realized, a real brother, not someone that just happened to be born from the same mother like with Azula. It was that notion which he had come up with on his own that affected him more than anything told to him thus far.

It gave him the strength for some humility, to not let Toph have to share in any of his gloom.

"Fire is a dangerous element," he said, finally turning to face her and the effect was not lost in her blindness. "Maybe it's better that she becomes your pupil." And as Toph choked back even as much as a sour look in that he could've been saying that his element was more powerful than hers Zuko continued, "You're going to be a great earthbending teacher for her, Toph. I've seen the proof."

His approval seemed to have a greater impact on the headstrong girl than even Katara could have predicted. He was after all a former enemy and Toph would've still gone on training Keiko without a hint of discontent even if he'd stormed away.

"Thanks, Zuko!" she beamed, gripping him into another hug and sandwiching Keiko in between. "She's going to be the best! The _best!_"

Toph released him before he could've gotten too uneasy and he couldn't help but notice that when she'd gone back to chat with Katara she'd left Keiko behind with him. Not like when they'd first met and she'd been being naughty she was now looking anywhere that wasn't his face.

Had she understood somehow, the meaning of the proceedings?

"It's no big deal," he said and it wasn't his words but that he pulled her closer that Keiko's unease lifted simple as that and she let herself be held. Katara and Toph, and even Ty Lee caught on quickly, didn't ask to have a turn with the baby when Yangchen led them and the village's waterbenders through the swamp and soon enough Keiko was fast asleep against Zuko with a thumb in her mouth.

Though the night was pitch, so long as they all linked hands to the Avatar whom led the way no living thing big or small disturbed them. They didn't know what it was but she seemed to know the swamp so well that she didn't need her borrowed eyes. She knew exactly where to step to avoid any pitfalls. When they had reached their destination and their eyes had adjusted as much as they were going to the group found themselves at the base of a wide pond. Katara's eyes and Toph's feet recognized it as the same one they had crash-landed into.

"It…" – Yangchen's eyes shut in a moment's concentration; she pointed to a specific point – "is _there_."

"What? You mean the balloon?"

"Yes."

Ty Lee looked stricken. "You mean you don't have some mystical Avatar freaky-doo that's going to magic us out of here?"

"Not this time, I'm afraid."

She huffed in disappointment but Mai wasn't there to talk it over with, her having stepped up onto the overgrown tree roots to get out of the muck. Mai spared a critical glance to her soiled shoes, reveling in the day she could throw them out, then directed that glance to Katara and the waterbenders.

"Make yourselves useful and bend it out. I'm _not_ heading back the way we came."

"I'll just get right on that then," Katara snapped back, irritated at the huge amount of water before them, irritated that Mai merely sat there without energy. "There are only eleven of us here. I've never had to move so much of it before."

"All wasted breath spent in talking."

Zuko tried to intervene, get between the two girls but Katara paid him no mind. "I suppose you two, Sun and Gloom, are just going to sit around?"

Mai turned from critical to bored. "Unless you think my stabbing the pond will make it spit out the balloon any faster."

"What's your problem?" Katara demanded, not recognizing Mai's dark, dry sense of humor as a sense of humor at all. "Here the Avatar saved you from getting picked up from the prison right after you'd escaped and you're now getting a free ride out of this place you hate so much. How about a little gratitude?"

"Ty Lee was right," Mai sighed, "you're just a wound up spring ready to snap at anyone. I believe I saved that brother of yours along with Zuko. You're not hearing me demanding any gratitude, are you?"

"Hey, hey," Zuko butted in, physically restraining Katara by a rough hand to her shoulder, "you guys have a truce, remember? Chill out, Katara, it's nothing personal, Mai's just always grumpy."

"_My_ hero," Mai droned out, rolling her eyes.

Not wanting to deal with it, Katara shrugged him off.

"Oh I didn't ask," said Zuko, getting back to Ty Lee. "Are you fine with this, joining the rebels?"

Ty Lee shrugged. "Where ever my two best friends go I'm happy to follow."

Katara stood to face her so-called waterbender kin. They were less than the dignified race of benders she'd lived amongst at the North Pole, using leaves for clothing where Katara only occasionally used the same for salads, less focused on her than on the noises of the swamp, she thought she even saw one of them digging wax out of his ear.

She knew better than to judge on appearances: Toph and Aang, cute, harmless-looking kids and bending masters, were proof.

"All right," she said and with a clap of her hands she had the waterbenders' undivided attention, "we're going to break off into two teams. You eight-" – she pointed out an invisible line to separate them – "are with me. You're the older and the more experienced and I'm going to need you to help me spin the water into a funnel. Gumni and Matka, you're younger and your reflexes faster so I'll need you to neutralize and control the borders of our working."

"I can help with that too," Zuko said. He shifted Keiko to free up an arm and joined the second group.

Their skills unusable for this particular task, Toph and Ty Lee took a back seat for what followed. Thinking ahead, only slightly annoyed by Katara's words of her lack of use, Mai hacked at dead trees for the firewood they would need.

Far enough in her art that she didn't need to see the water to direct it, Katara took the front of the larger group of benders, facing them instead of the pond, and instructed them to follow her lead. Katara pushed and pulled in a clockwise direction, shutting her eyes and all concerns and moving the whole of her body in rhythm. The benders mimicked her, moving in five complete circles before the seven were in perfect synchronization with each other and their element.

An unnatural dip formed a distance off in the water like a spoonful out of a bowl of sugar. It widened and deepened with every circle completed but the deeper it went the rest of the pond water wanted to move in and overtake the hole they were poking in it.

Gumni and Matka were there to detect where in their structure that the water pressure was greatest. They pushed it back and held it off while Zuko blasted flames to evaporate any stray waves that slipped from the benders control back into the middle.

They were about nine feet deep when the clockwise flow of the water began to falter. The pressure was building – Katara had underestimated its power under the guise of a mild-looking little swamp. Creating a waterspout was one thing but in digging into a large body of water they were fighting the water pressure of the entire deep, deep pond.

Before their work could be compromised three benders from her group joined the other group. They tunneled another few feet before the same problem further intensified and their progress was forced to slow and steady.

Tired of waiting around doing nothing, Ty Lee sprung to her feet and Katara nearly dropped all that she was doing when she saw the other girl approach a bender with her signature pose.

"What are you-!?" Katara gasped but too late.

Ty Lee struck a total of three pressure points on young Matka but instead of her crumbling to the ground, her chi blocked and useless, her energy seemed to increase and the spots she was manning strengthened. Ty Lee did the same to the others, Zuko refusing the power up saying he was only getting his second wind, and soon enough each of the benders were better off than they were to start.

Katara stared, unaware, never considering that Ty Lee's form of fighting could have beneficial properties along with destructive.

Before she sat Ty Lee looked to Katara with a curious glance.

"_No_," said Katara curtly. She could already feel the water she was wielding make contact with the balloon.

After a couple minutes the balloon tasted its first breath of air after several hours of being submerged. The benders pushed down, willing the basket to float to the surface. They could only just make out the tip of the rudder when Gumni's pressure bending faltered. That one failing would have ripped away and destroyed the entire working like a snag in a loom working but none of the other waterbenders could abandon their post.

Zuko's quick reflexes pulled through. He blasted the overflow of water that would've sent the balloon crashing back into the depths a second time.

The balloon surfaced. The waterbenders pulled it onto the shore and sucked out the water from its every pore; powered by air and fire it wouldn't function otherwise.

Zuko had been about to approach the balloon when he felt a change, this time before any of the girls. He turned and saw his mother shaking her head, dazed and like she'd woken from an overlong dream.

Her head rose and it could be seen that her eyes had returned to normal.

"Zuko? Keiko?" she said, hopeful, fighting off the daze that didn't make her wonder how they had somehow returned to square one in the seemingly space of a second. "You…you're all right, both of you."

He breathed easy, glad that the Avatar's role had come to an end and that his mother had been released. When Zuko saw her nearing him with a certain sentimental look in her gaze it was a different story and he panicked. There were too many people!

The second Ursa reached him he practically shoved off the baby in her face for her to unload her feelings on instead.

"Keiko, honey," the woman cooed, cradling her little one lovingly, waking her peacefully and holding her close. "Mommy missed you."

"Mmmm," Keiko murmured wordlessly, nestling into her familiar breast and falling back asleep.

Zuko had thought he was off the hook until he was hooked around the neck into a one-armed hug and pulled right back. "Don't think I forgot about you," she whispered mischievously, planting a kiss on his cheek before he could pull away.

Zuko ducked from under her grip too late and he braced himself to be made fun of. He saw however that no one's attention was directed their way; one of the girls had started up a distraction in the form of stories of their many adventures and the others had joined in, though either side couldn't hold back some scorn while addressing the other sides efforts.

Though Zuko would've never thought it possible, whichever side he was on, he was currently in good standing with them all. Any one of them could've initiated it.

That peculiar thought stayed with him as he fueled the hot air for the balloon.

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Small footsteps raced atop the wide stone floors of the Western Air Temple and echoed through the chambers. The Duke was trying both to run and to keep the water in the overturned helmet in his hands from sloshing out all over the floor. A pretty orange-spotted fish was jolted from its makeshift bowl a number of times but the little boy caught it again each time.

There had to be _someone_ around to praise him for his find.

The Duke plunked the little fish into the fountain with the three others he had found, an off and off hobby he'd taken on after he'd seen all there was to see in the temple. He'd only just turned around when he saw the first thing he'd seen on the outside platforms.

It was in the sky.

"Sokka! Aang! You guys, you guys come quick!" The boy was off in a blur. "Teo, Haru!"

As the red spot in the sky came into a certain range of closeness, that it was all alone, those of the group that had remained at the temple recognized it as one of the escape balloons from the larger war balloon stolen from Azula. They all waved when it came, Aang with more energy, The Duke wind-milling his little arms with such energy it would be impossible not to see him.

Hakoda and Chit Sang grabbed the front of the basket and steadied it in for landing. Those who had remained behind were plenty eager to talk to and be filled in of things that had occurred in their absence but before they could Zuko leapt out of the basket just as fast as he could.

"_Sokka!_" he strained out in a traumatized tone, grabbing the front of his shirt.

"What's with you?" Sokka came back, more than a little unnerved.

"Too – many – _girls!_" Zuko choked out like every word hurt him.

Sokka looked over to see and over his face passed a similar look of disgust. "Geez, I'll say! What is there like a six of them and – wait why are those two assassins here!? Why did you-!?"

"They're on _our_ side now!" Toph supplied happily and to emphasize that fact Ty Lee shot Sokka a blinding bright smile and blew him a kiss to which he shifted uneasily in his shoes.

"They've seen the light and are ready to fight for the good of the world," said Aang, drawing his own conclusions and making Mai and Ty Lee exchange a look of doubtfulness.

"Oh…okay," Sokka said, shaking it off. "It's all right now, buddy," he said understandably, getting back to Zuko and trying to remove his death grip from his shirt. "All over now. You survived."

To that Katara raised an eyebrow; he was speaking as though Zuko had survived a battle.

"You don't know what it was like!" Zuko burst out. "I couldn't move without bumping into one of them and all they talked about was boys and how cute the baby was and fussing over the baby and squealing over the things she did and their hair, their _hair!_" He yanked at his own hair as if remembering. "Then Mom was nagging me about giving her grandkids and Mai, Ty Lee, and Katara were getting all catty with each other and – and-!"

"Whoa, that's enough!" Sokka cut in, not wanting to share his pain a second longer. "You – you _she-demons!_" he shouted at the females in the balloon. "Keep your nasty _girl_ germs to yourselves! Look what you did to the poor guy!"

"We didn't _do_ anything!" his sister argued, affronted at the very notion.

"Clearly you did!"

"Don't make me beat your face in you sexist jerk!"

"Don't make me join her!" Suki joined in, coming in behind him.

"It was you, me, and Aang for the longest time, I'll have you know," Katara returned, not letting it go for a second, determined to drive the point home to her hardheaded brother. "And nothing at all happened to me. You two are just-"

"That doesn't count."

"_Why_ doesn't that count!?"

Sokka took on the air of a professor dumbing down his teachings to explain to a small child. "Everybody knows that Aang is a girl trapped in a boy's body."

"_What!?_" Aang squawked, shocked and insulted.

"Sorry little guy, truth hurts. Anyway," he plowed straight on without regard for the airbender's bruised ego, "all the manly men here can come join Zuko and me in a hunting expedition right _now_. Hear that, Zuko? You get to _kill_ something! Wanna kill something?"

"_Yeeesssss,_" he pleaded.

"Okay man," Sokka said, clapping the other boy's shoulder in support, "let's go."

"Get some actual _meat_ this time!" Toph barked after them before they got too far.

With an expression warped in disbelief, insult, and the general weirdness of it all, Katara watched them go, flanked by Haru and The Duke. "Have fun finding Zuko's…uh…_manliness_." She shuddered and grabbed a bag.

"No, _I'll_ take it!" Aang shouted, his voice cracking a little, grabbing the bag away with some fierceness, loading it onto his back with four other heavy bags. "I can carry big loads, _big_ loads, just like _any_ other guy, _better_ than any other guy, I'm the _Avatar_, I-!"

"Eh, heh, heh, _okay_ Aang," And a sense embarrassment crowded into the overfull emotions of Katara's face.

The girls filed out of the balloon while Aang filled himself up like a pack-mule, wordlessly cursing under his breath over what Sokka had said. Hakoda embraced his daughter; Suki kept a watchful eye on Mai and Ty Lee but clapped both Katara and Toph into welcoming hugs.

"Looks like _you_ guys were busy," Suki said cheerily, glad to see them again. "I recognize _their_ faces," she started, looking back at Mai and Ty Lee as if she could forget. "So that's Zuko's mom, is it? Like in the letter?"

"That's her."

Suki took the woman in for a moment in mild curiosity. "Ursa!"

The Fire Lady turned and Katara and Toph wore identical expressions of confusion.

"Thought so!" Suki remarked and she strode up straight to the woman she'd just addressed, pulled out a rolled parchment. "A messenger hawk delivered this about an hour ago. We didn't know who it was for but now you're here."

Ursa looked at the girl who held out her letter. She took it and found her name and that only written on the parchment; below laid a wax seal encasing it shut and safe. The wax was white, its seal unrecognizable.

She broke it open. She scanned the contents.

While Mai and Ty Lee scouted out the temple for rooms to lay claim to Suki relayed what had happened in their absence including a scary several seconds when Aang was unable to use his bending, Katara and Toph to her.

"And that's not the best part," Suki continued and she seemed to be saving up for something. "The _best_ part…"

Hakoda took the signal she'd sent and he stepped to a side revealing a rather short teenager in peasant's clothing with a too-big hat. In being revealed he looked like a moose-lion caught in the path of Fire Nation destroyer vehicles.

"Hello," Katara started friendly-like in efforts to ease his unease. "What's your name?"

"Mi…Miara."

Katara thought she might've had seen glimpses of it under his long sleeves but then her father Hakoda lifted the boy's hat and confirmed it: blue arrows. The boy was a surviving airbender just like Avatar Yangchen had said there were.

"_And_ he's got aunts and uncles and cousins," Suki continued, beside herself with joy. "Two clans, _two_ just showed up over the past couple of days seeking the Avatar, wanting to join his cause. We had no idea where they came from."

"That…" Katara was stuck for a second, "that's great!"

The three exclaimed over their wonderful luck after the chips had been so down before but not for long until they turned back to the sound of Ursa finishing her letter, rolling it back up even as Keiko touched the parchment as if trying to reach the person that had wrote it.

"So who wrote-?" Katara started with a strong hunch that it was her husband but Ursa had snapped the paper back into a roll before the girl could snag a glimpse.

With a strange and distant expression, Ursa pocketed the parchment into the inner folds of her blouse and didn't volunteer a word of information. She took the same path as Mai and Ty Lee for a room of her own, for the much needed solitude she desired after reading the letter.

"Pleasant dreams, girls."

~~~ The End ~~~

Yay, I finished my second story and just before my vacation too! Please R&R, I'm oh-so happy when you do! And look forward to an upcoming story about…ooo I don't want to ruin the surprise! Wait and see! It's a good one!

Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading my story! You guys rock!

Arual-san


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